"No; I"m going down home pretty early, and I wanted to ask your mother what is the best way to put away my winter things."
"You"ll find my mother very good authority on such matters," said Halleck.
Through an obscure a.s.sociation with moths that corrupt, he added, "She"s a good authority on church matters, too."
"I guess I shall talk with her about Flavia," said Marcia.
Cyrus came out of the house. "Mis" Halleck will be here in a minute. She"s got to get red of a lady that"s calling, first," he explained.
"I will leave you, then," said Halleck, abruptly.
"Good by," answered Marcia, tranquilly. The baby stirred; she pushed the carriage to and fro, without glancing after him as he walked away.
His mother came down the steps from the house, and kissed Marcia for welcome, and looked under the carriage-top at the sleeping baby. "How she _does_ sleep!" she whispered.
"Yes," said Marcia, with the proud humility of a mother, who cannot deny the merit of her child, "and she sleeps the whole night through. I"m _never_ up with her. Bartley says she"s a perfect Seven-Sleeper. It"s a regular joke with him,--her sleeping."
"Ben was a good baby for sleeping, too," said Mrs. Halleck, retrospectively emulous. "It"s one of the best signs. It shows that the child is strong and healthy." They went on to talk of their children, and in their community of motherhood they spoke of the young man as if he were still an infant. "He has never been a moment"s care to me," said Mrs. Halleck. "A well baby will be well even in teething."
"And I had somehow thought of him as sickly!" said Marcia, in self-derision.
Tears of instant intelligence sprang into his mother"s eyes. "And did you suppose he was _always_ lame?" she demanded, with gentle indignation. "He was the brightest and strongest boy that ever was, till he was twelve years old. That"s what makes it so hard to bear; that"s what makes me wonder at the way the child bears it! Did you never hear how it happened? One of the big boys, as he called him, tripped him up at school, and he fell on his hip. It kept him in bed for a year, and he"s never been the same since; he will always be a cripple," grieved the mother. She wiped her eyes; she never could think of her boy"s infirmity without weeping. "And what seemed the worst of all," she continued, "was that the boy who did it never expressed any regret for it, or acknowledged it by word or deed, though he must have known that Ben knew who hurt him. He"s a man here, now; and sometimes Ben meets him. But Ben always says that he can stand it, if the other one can. He was always just so from the first! He wouldn"t let us blame the boy; he said that he didn"t mean any harm, and that all was fair in play. And now he says he knows the man is sorry, and would own to what he did, if he didn"t have to own to what came of it. Ben says that very few of us have the courage to face the consequences of the injuries we do, and that"s what makes people seem hard and indifferent when they are really not so. There!" cried Mrs. Halleck. "I don"t know as I ought to have told you about it; I know Ben wouldn"t like it. But I can"t bear to have any one think he was always lame, though I don"t know why I shouldn"t: I"m prouder of him since it happened than ever I was before. I thought he was here with you," she added, abruptly.
"He went out just before you came," said Marcia, nodding toward the gate.
She sat listening to Mrs. Halleck"s talk about Ben; Mrs. Halleck took herself to task from time to time, but only to go on talking about him again. Sometimes Marcia commented on his characteristics, and compared them with Bartley"s, or with Flavia"s, according to the period of Ben"s life under consideration.
At the end Mrs. Halleck said: "I haven"t let you get in a word! Now you must talk about _your_ baby. Dear little thing! I feel that she"s been neglected. But I"m always just so selfish when I get to running on about Ben. They all laugh at me."
"Oh, I like to hear about other children," said Marcia, turning the perambulator round. "I don"t think any one can know too much that has the care of children of their own." She added, as if it followed from something they had been saying of vaccination, "Mrs. Halleck, I want to talk with you about getting Flavia christened. You know I never was christened."
"Weren"t you?" said Mrs. Halleck, with a dismay which she struggled to conceal.
"No," said Marcia, "father doesn"t believe in any of those things, and mother had got to letting them go, because he didn"t take any interest in them. They did have the first children christened, but I was the last."
"I didn"t speak with your father on the subject," faltered Mrs. Halleck. "I didn"t know what his persuasion was."
"Why, father doesn"t belong to _any_ church! He believes in a G.o.d, but he doesn"t believe in the Bible." Mrs. Halleck sank down on the garden seat too much shocked to speak, and Marcia continued. "I don"t know whether the Bible is true or not; but I"ve often wished that I belonged to church."
"You couldn"t, unless you believed in the Bible," said Mrs. Halleck.
"Yes, I know that. Perhaps I should, if anybody proved it to me. I presume it could be explained. I never talked much with any one about it. There must be a good many people who don"t belong to church, although they believe in the Bible. I should be perfectly willing to try, if I only knew how to begin."
In view of this ruinous open-mindedness, Mrs. Halleck could only say, "The way to begin is to read it."
"Well, I will try. How do you know, after you"ve become so that you believe the Bible, whether you"re fit to join the church?"
"It"s hard to tell you, my dear. You have to feel first that you have a Saviour,--that you"ve given your whole heart to him,--that he can save you, and that no one else can,--that all you can do yourself won"t help you.
It"s an experience."
Marcia looked at her attentively, as if this were all a very hard saying.
"Yes, I"ve heard of that. Some of the girls had it at school. But I never did. Well," she said at last, "I don"t feel so anxious about myself, just at present, as I do about Flavia. I want to do everything I can for Flavia, Mrs. Halleck. I want her to be christened,--I want her to be baptized into some church. I think a good deal about it. I think sometimes, what if she should die, and I hadn"t done that for her, when may be it was one of the most important things--" Her voice shook, and she pressed her lips together.
"Of course," said Mrs. Halleck, tenderly, "I think it is the _most_ important thing."
"But there are so many churches," Marcia resumed. "And I don"t know about any of them. I told Mr. Halleck just now, that I should like her to belong to the church where the best people went, if I could find it out. Of course, it was a ridiculous way to talk; I knew he thought so. But what I meant was that I wanted she should be with good people all her life; and I didn"t care what she believed."
"It"s very important to believe the truth, my dear," said Mrs. Halleck.
"But the truth is so hard to be certain of, and you know goodness as soon as you see it. Mrs. Halleck, I"ll tell you what I want: I want Flavia should be baptized into your church. Will you let her?"
"_Let_ her? O my dear child, we shall be humbly thankful that it has been put into your heart to choose for her what _we_ think is the true church,"
said Mrs. Halleck, fervently.
"I don"t know about that," returned Marcia. "I can"t tell whether it"s the true church or not, and I don"t know that I ever could; but I shall be satisfied--if it"s made you what you are," she added, simply.
Mrs. Halleck did not try to turn away her praise with vain affectations of humility. "We try to do right, Marcia," she said. "Whenever we do it, we must be helped to it by some power outside of ourselves. I can"t tell you whether it"s our church; I"m not so sure of that as I used to be. I once thought that there could be no real good out of it; but I _can"t_ think that, any more. Olive and Ben are as good children as ever lived; I _know_ they won"t be lost; but neither of them belongs to our church."
"Why, what church does he belong to?"
"He doesn"t belong to any, my dear," said Mrs. Halleck, sorrowfully.
Marcia looked at her absently. "I knew Olive was a Unitarian; but I thought--I thought he--"
"No, he doesn"t," returned Mrs. Halleck. "It has been a great cross to his father and me. He is a good boy; but we think the _truth_ is in our church!"
Marcia was silent a moment. Then she said, decisively, "Well, I should like Flavia to belong to your church."
"She couldn"t belong to it now," Mrs. Halleck explained. "That would have to come later, when she could understand. But she could be christened in it--dear little thing!"
"Well, christened, then. It must be the training he got in it. I"ve thought a great deal about it, and I think my worst trouble is that I"ve been left too free in everything. One mustn"t be left too free. I"ve never had any one to control me, and now I can"t control myself at the very times when I need to do it the most, with--with--When I "in in danger of vexing--When Bartley and I--"
"Yes," said Mrs. Halleck, sympathetically.
"And Bartley is just so, too. He"s always been left to himself. And Flavia will need all the control we can give her,--I know she will. And I shall have her christened in your church, and I shall teach her all about it. She shall go to the Sunday school, and I will go to church, so that she can have an example. I told father I should do it when he was up here, and he said there couldn"t be any harm in it. And I"ve told Bartley, and _he_ doesn"t care."
They were both far too single-minded and too serious to find anything droll in the terms of the adhesion of Marcia"s family to her plan, and Mrs.
Halleck entered into its execution with affectionate zeal.
"Ben, dear," she said, tenderly, that evening, when they were all talking it over in the family council, "I hope you didn"t drop anything, when that poor creature spoke to you about it this morning, that could unsettle her mind in any way?"
"No, mother," said Halleck, gently.
"I was sure you didn"t," returned his mother, repentantly.
They had been talking a long time of the matter, and Halleck now left the room.
"Mother! How could you say such a thing to Ben?" cried Olive, in a quiver of indignant sympathy. "Ben say anything to unsettle anybody"s religious purposes! He"s got more religion now than all the rest of the family put together!"
"Speak for yourself, Olive," said one of the intermediary sisters.