"Aunt Frances," she said one day, "I wish I had a place of my own.
What is the reason I can"t? A girl can go in for Art, and set up a studio; or she can go to Rome, and sculp, and study; she can learn elocution, and read, whether people want to be read to or not; and all that is Progress and Woman"s Rights; why can"t she set up a _home_?"
"Because, I suppose, a house is not a home; and the beginning of a home is just what she waits for. Meanwhile, if she has a father and a mother, she would not put a slight on _their_ home, or fail of her share of the duty in it."
"But n.o.body would think I failed in my duty if I were going to be married. I"m sure mamma would think I was doing it beautifully. And I never shall be married. Why can"t I live something out for myself, and have a place of my own? I have got money enough to pay my rent, and I could do sewing in a genteel way, or keep a school for little children. I"d rather--take in back stairs to wash," she exclaimed vehemently, "than wait round for things, and be nothing! And I should like to begin young, while there might be some sort of fun in it. You"d like to come and take tea with me, wouldn"t you, Aunt Frank?"
"If it were all right that you should have separate teas of your own."
"And if I had waffles. Well, I should. I think, just now, there"s nothing I should like so much as a little kitchen of my own, and a pie-board, and a biscuit-cutter, and a beautiful baking oven, and a j.a.pan tea-pot."
"The pretty part. But brooms, and pails, and wash-tubs, and the back stairs?"
"I specified back stairs in the first place, of my own accord. I wouldn"t shirk. Sometimes I think that real good old-fashioned hard work is what I do want. I should like to find the right, honest thing, and do it, Aunt Frank."
She said it earnestly, and there were tears in her eyes.
"I believe you would," said Mrs. Ripwinkley. "But perhaps the right, honest thing, just now, is to wait patiently, with all your might."
"Now, that"s good," said Desire, "and cute of you, too, that last piece of a sentence. If you had stopped at "_patiently_," as people generally do! That"s what exasperates; when you want to do something with all your might. It almost seems as if I could, when you put it so."
"It is a "stump," Luclarion would say."
"Luclarion is a saint and a philosopher. I feel better," said Desire.
She stayed feeling better all that afternoon; she helped Sulie Praile cut out little panels from her thick sheet of gray painting-board, and contrived her a small easel with her round lightstand and a book-rest; for Sulie was advancing in the fine arts, from painting dollies" paper faces in cheap water colors, to copying bits of flowers and fern and moss, with oils, on gray board; and she was doing it very well, and with exquisite delight.
To wait, meant something to wait for; something coming by and by; that was what comforted Desire to-day, as she walked home alone in the sharp, short, winter twilight; that, and the being patient with all one"s might. To be patient, is to be also strong; this she saw, newly; and Desire coveted, most of all, to be strong.
Something to wait for. "He does not cheat," said Desire, low down in her heart, to herself. For the child had faith, though she could not talk about it.
Something; but very likely not the thing you have seen, or dreamed of; something quite different, it may be, when it comes; and it may come by the way of losing, first, all that you have been able yet, with a vague, whispering hope, to imagine.
The things we do not know! The things that are happening,--the things that are coming; rising up in the eastward of our lives below the horizon that we can yet see; it may be a star, it may be a cloud!
Desire Ledwith could not see that out at Westover, this cheery winter night, it was one of dear Miss Pennington"s "Next Thursdays;"
she could not see that the young architect, living away over there in the hundred-year-old house on the side of East Hill, a boarder with old Miss Arabel Waite, had been found, and appreciated, and drawn into their circle by the Haddens and the Penningtons and the Holabirds and the Inglesides; and that Rosamond was showing him the pleasant things in their Westover life,--her "swan"s nest among the reeds," that she had told him of,--that early autumn evening, when they had walked up Hanley Street together.
XVI.
SWARMING.
Spring came on early, with heavy rains and freshets in many parts of the country.
It was a busy time at Z----.
Two things had happened there that were to give Kenneth Kincaid more work, and would keep him where he was all summer.
Just before he went to Z----, there had been a great fire at West Hill. All Mr. Roger Marchbanks"s beautiful place was desolate.
House, conservatories, stables, lovely little vine-covered rustic buildings, exquisitely tended shrubbery,--all swept over in one night by the red flames, and left lying in blackness and ashes.
For the winter, Mr. Marchbanks had taken his family to Boston; now he was planning eagerly to rebuild. Kenneth had made sketches; Mr.
Marchbanks liked his ideas; they had talked together from time to time. Now, the work was actually in hand, and Kenneth was busy with drawings and specifications.
Down at the river, during the spring floods, a piece of the bridge had been carried away, and the dam was broken through. There were new mill buildings, too, going up, and a block of factory houses.
All this business, through Mr. Marchbanks directly or indirectly, fell also into Kenneth"s hands.
He wrote blithe letters to Dorris; and Dorris, running in and out from her little spring cleanings that Hazel was helping her with, told all the letters over to the Ripwinkleys.
"He says I must come up there in my summer vacation and board with his dear old Miss Waite. Think of Kentie"s being able to give me such a treat as that! A lane, with ferns and birches, and the woods,--_pine_ woods!--and a hill where raspberries grow, and the river!"
Mrs. Ledwith was thinking of her summer plans at this time, also.
She remembered the large four-windowed room looking out over the meadow, that Mrs. Megilp and Glossy had at Mrs. Prendible"s, for twelve dollars a week, in And. She could do no better than that, at country boarding, anywhere; and Mr. Ledwith could sleep at the house in Shubarton Place, getting his meals down town during the week, and come up and spend his Sundays with them. A bedroom, in addition, for six dollars more, would be all they would want.
The Ripwinkleys were going up to Homesworth by and by for a little while, and would take Sulie Praile with them. Sulie was ecstatically happy. She had never been out of the city in all her life. She felt, she said, "as if she was going to heaven without dying." Vash was to be left at Mrs. Scarup"s with her sister.
Miss Craydocke would be away at the mountains; all the little life that had gathered together in the Aspen Street neighborhood, seemed about to be broken up.
Uncle t.i.tus 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."