Just Sixteen.
by Susan Coolidge.
JUST SIXTEEN.
A LITTLE KNIGHT OF LABOR.
The first real snow-storm of the winter had come to Sandyport by the Sea.
It had been a late and merciful autumn. Till well into November the leaves still clung to their boughs, honeysuckles made shady coverts on trellises, and put forth now and then an orange and milk-white blossom full of frosty sweetness; the gra.s.s was still green where the snow allowed it to be seen. Thick and fast fell the wind-blown flakes on the lightly frozen ground. The patter and beat of the flying storm was a joyous sound to children who owned sleds and had been waiting the chance to use them. Many a boy"s face looked out as the dusk fell, to make sure that the storm continued; and many a bright voice cried, "Hurrah! It"s coming down harder than ever! To-morrow it will be splendid!" Stable-men were shaking out fur robes and arranging cutters. Already the fitful sound of sleigh-bells could be heard; and all the world--the world of Sandyport that is--was preparing to give the in-coming winter a gay welcome.
But in one house in an old-fashioned but still respectable street no one seemed inclined to join in the general merry-making. Only two lights broke its darkness: one shone from the kitchen at the back, where, beside a kerosene lamp, Bethia Kendrick, the old-time servitor of the Talcott family, was gloomily darning stockings, and otherwise making ready for departure on the morrow. The other and fainter glow came from the front room, where without any lamp Georgie Talcott sat alone beside her fire.
It was a little fire, and built of rather queer materials. There were bits of lath and box-covers, fence-pickets split in two, shavings, pasteboard clippings, and on top of all, half of an old chopping-bowl.
The light material burned out fast, and had to be continually replenished from the basket which stood on one side the grate.
Georgie, in fact, was burning up the odds and ends of her old life before leaving it behind forever. She was to quit the house on the morrow; and there was something significant to her, and very sorrowful, in this disposal of its shreds and fragments; they meant so little to other people, and so very much to her. The old chopping-bowl, for instance,--her thoughts went back from it to the first time she had ever been permitted to join in the making of the Christmas pies. She saw her mother, still a young woman then, and pretty with the faded elegance which had been her characteristic, weighing the sugar and plums, and slicing the citron, while her own daring little hands plied the chopper in that very bowl. What joy there was in those vigorous dabs and cross-way cuts! how she had liked to do it! And now, the pretty mother, faded and gray, lay under the frozen turf, on which the snow-flakes were thickly falling. There could be no more Christmases for Georgie in the old house; it was sold, and to-morrow would close its doors behind her forever.
She shivered as these thoughts pa.s.sed through her mind, and rising moved restlessly toward the window. It was storming faster than ever. The sight seemed to make the idea of the morrow harder to bear; a big tear formed in each eye, blurring the white world outside into a dim grayness. Presently one ran down her nose and fell on her hand. She looked at it with dismay, wiped it hastily off, and went back to the fire.
"I won"t cry, whatever happens, I"m resolved on that," she said half aloud, as she put the other half of the chopping-bowl on the waning blaze. The deep-soaked richness of long-perished meats was in the old wood still. It flared broadly up the chimney. Georgie again sat down by the fire and resumed her thinking.
"What am I going to do?" she asked herself for the hundredth time. "When my visit to Cousin Vi is over, I must decide on something; but what? A week is such a short time in which to settle such an important thing."
It is hard to be confronted at twenty with the problem of one"s own support. Georgie hitherto had been as happy and care-free as other girls. Her mother, as the widow of a naval officer, was ent.i.tled to a small pension. This, with a very little more in addition, had paid for Georgie"s schooling, and kept the old house going in a sufficiently comfortable though very modest fashion. But Mrs. Talcott was not by nature an exemplary manager. It was hard not to overrun here and there, especially after Georgie grew up, and "took her place in society," as the poor lady phrased it,--the place which was rightfully hers as her father"s daughter and the descendant of a long line of Talcotts and Chaunceys and Wainwrights. She coveted pretty things for her girl, as all mothers do, and it was too much for her strength always to deny herself.
So Georgie had "just this" and "just that," and being a fresh attractive creature, and a favorite, made her little go as far as the other girls"
much, and now and again the tiny capital was encroached upon. And then, and then,--this is a world of sorry chances, as the weak and helpless find to their cost,--came the bad year, when the Ranscuttle Mills pa.s.sed their dividend and the stock went down to almost nothing; and then Mrs.
Talcott"s long illness, and then her death. Sickness and death are luxuries which the poor will do well to go without. Georgie went over the calculations afresh as she sat by the fire, and the result came out just the same, and not a penny better. When she had paid for her mother"s funeral, and all the last bills, she would have exactly a hundred and seventy-five dollars a year to live upon,--that and no more!
The furniture,--could she get something for that? She glanced round the room, and shook her head. The articles were neither handsome enough nor quaint enough to command a good price. She looked affectionately at the hair-cloth sofa on which her mother had so often lain, at the well-worn secretary. How could she part with these? How could she sell her great-grandfather"s picture, or who, in fact, except herself, would care for the rather ill-painted portrait of a rigid old worthy of the last century, in a wig and ruffled shirt, with a view of Sandyport harbor by way of a background? Her father"s silhouette hung beneath it, with his sword and a little mezzotint of his ship. These were treasures to her, but what were they to any one else?
"No," she decided. "Bethia shall take the old kitchen things and her own bedroom furniture, and have the use of them; but the rest must go into Miss Sally"s attic for the present. They wouldn"t fetch anything; and if they would, I don"t think I could bear to sell them. And now that is settled, I must think again, what _am_ I to do? I must do something."
She turned over all manner of schemes in her mind, but all seemed fruitless. Sew? The town was full of sempstresses. Georgie knew of half a dozen who could not get work enough to keep them busy half the time.
Teach? She could not; her education in no one respect had been thorough enough. Embroider for the Women"s Exchanges and Decorative Art Societies? Perhaps; but it seemed to her that was the very thing to which all dest.i.tute people with pretensions to gentility fled as a matter of course, and that the market for tidies and "splashers" and pine-pillows was decidedly overstocked.
"It"s no use thinking about it to-night," was the sensible decision to which she at last arrived. "I am too tired. I"ll get a sound night"s sleep if I can, and put off my worries till I am safely at Miss Sally"s."
The sound night"s sleep stood Georgie in good stead, for the morrow taxed all her powers of endurance, both physical and moral. Bethia, unhappy at losing the home of years, was tearful and fractious to a degree. Sending off the furniture through the deep snow proved a slow and troublesome matter. The doors necessarily stood open a great deal, the rooms grew very cold, everything was comfortless and dispiriting.
And underlying all, put aside but never unfelt, was a deep sense of pain at the knowledge that this was the last day,--the very, very last of the home she had always known, and might know no more.
When the final sledge-load creaked away over the hard frozen crust, Georgie experienced a sense of relief.
"The sooner "tis over, the sooner to sleep,"
she sang below her breath. Everything was in order. She had generalled all ably; nothing was omitted or forgotten. With steady care she raked out the fire in the kitchen stove, which the new owner of the house had taken off her hands, and saw to the fastenings of the windows. Then she tied on her bonnet and black veil, gave the weeping Bethia a good-by kiss on the door-step, closed and locked the door, and waded wearily through the half-broken paths to the boarding-house of Miss Sally Scannell, where Cousin Vi, otherwise Miss Violet Talcott, had lived for years.
No very enthusiastic reception awaited her. Cousin Vi"s invitation had been given from a sense of duty. She "owed it to the child," she told herself, as she cleared out a bureau-drawer, and made a place for Georgie"s trunk in the small third-story room which for sixteen years had represented to her all the home she had known. Of course such a visit must be a brief one.
"So you"re come!" was her greeting as Georgie appeared. "I thought you"d be here sooner; but I suppose you"ve had a good deal to do. I should have offered to help if the day had not been so cold. Come in and take your things off."
Georgie glanced about her as she smoothed her hair. The room bore the unmistakable marks of spinsterhood and decayed gentility. It was crammed with little belongings, some valuable, some perfectly valueless. Two or three pieces of spindle-legged and claw-footed mahogany made an odd contrast to the common painted bedroom set. Miniatures by Malbone and lovely pale-lined mezzotints and line engravings hung on the walls amid a maze of photographs and j.a.panese fans and Christmas cards and chromos; an indescribable confusion of duds enc.u.mbered every shelf and table; and in the midst sat Miss Vi"s tall, meager, dissatisfied self, with thin hair laboriously trained after the prevailing fashion, and a dress whose antique material seemed oddly unsuited to its modern cut and loopings. Somehow the pitifulness of the scene struck Georgie afresh.
"Shall I ever be like this?" she reflected.
"Now tell me what has happened since the funeral," said her cousin. "I had neuralgia all last week and week before, or I should have got down oftener. Who has called? Have the Hanburys been to see you?"
"Ellen came last week, but I was out," replied Georgie.
"What a pity! And how did it happen that you were out? You ought not to have been seen in the street so soon, I think. It"s not customary."
"How could I help it?" responded Georgie, sadly. "I had all the move to arrange for. Mr. Custer wanted the house for Sat.u.r.day. There was no one to go for me."
"I suppose you couldn"t; but it"s a pity. It"s never well to outrage conventionalities. Have Mrs. St. John and Mrs. Constant Carrington called?"
"Mrs. Carrington hasn"t, but she wrote me a little note. And dear Mrs.
St. John came twice, and brought flowers, and was ever so kind. She always has been so very nice to me, you know."
"Naturally! The St. Johns were n.o.bodies till Mr. St. John made all that money in railroads. She is glad enough to be on good terms with the old families, of course."
"I don"t think it"s that," said Georgie, rather wearily. "I think she"s nice because she"s naturally so kind-hearted, and she likes me."
The tea-bell put an end to the discussion. Miss Sally"s welcome was a good deal warmer than Cousin Vi"s had been.
"You poor dear child," she exclaimed, "you look quite tired out! Here, take this seat by the fire, Georgie, and I"ll pour your tea out first of all. She needs it, don"t she?" to Cousin Vi.
"_Miss Talcott_ is rather tired, I dare say," said that lady, icily.
Cousin Vi had lived for sixteen years in daily intercourse with Miss Sally, one of the sunniest and most friendly of women, and had never once relaxed into cordiality in all that time. Her code of manners included no approximation toward familiarity between a Talcott and a letter of lodgings.
Georgie took a different view. "Thank you so much, dear Miss Sally," she said. "How good you are! I _am_ tired."
"I wish you wouldn"t call Miss Sally "dear,"" her cousin remarked after they had gone upstairs. "That sort of thing is most disagreeable to me.
You have to be on your guard continually in a house like this, or you get mixed up with all sorts of people."
Georgie let it pa.s.s. She was too tired to argue.
"Now, let us talk about your plans," Miss Talcott said next morning.
"Have you made any yet?"
"N--o; only that I must find some work to do at once."
"Don"t speak like that to any one but me," her cousin said sharply.
"There _are_ lady-like occupations, of course, in which you can--can--mingle; but they need not be mentioned, or made known to people in general."
"What _do_ you mean?"