Into the midst of this state of dismal journeying into the valley of gloom there pealed the sound of the bell. It did not startle her; the callers in their circle would be sure to be engaged at the party, and to suppose that she was. Besides, it was hardly an evening for ordinary callers--something as important as a party was, would be expected to call out people to-night. It was some one with a business message for father, she presumed; and she did not arouse from her curled-up position among the cushions of that great chair.
Half listening, half giving attention to her own thoughts, she was conscious that a servant came to answer the bell, that the front door opened and shut, that there was a question asked and answered in the hall. Then she gave over attending to the matter. If she were needed the girl knew she was in the library. Yes, she was to be summoned for something, to receive the message probably, for the library door quietly unclosed.
"What is it, Katie?" she asked, in a sort of m.u.f.fled undertone, to hide the traces of disturbance in her voice, and not turning her head in that direction; she knew there were tears on her cheeks.
"Suppose it should not be Katie, may any one else come in and tell you what it is?" This was the sentence wherewith she was answered. What a sudden springing up there was from that chair! Even the tears were forgotten; and what a singular ring there was to Flossy"s voice as she whirled round to full view of the intruder, and said, "Oh, Mr. Roberts!"
Now, dear friends of this little lonely Flossy, are you so stupid that you need to be told that in less than half an hour from that moment she believed that there could never again come to her an absolutely lonely hour? That whatever might come between them, whether of life or of death, there would be that for each to remember that would make it impossible ever to be desolate again. For there is no desolation of heart to those who part at night to meet again in the morning; there may be loneliness and a reaching out after, and sometimes an unutterable longing for the morning, but to those who are sure, _sure_ beyond the possibility of a doubt, that the eternal morning _will_ dawn, and dawn for them, there is never again a desolation.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
[Ill.u.s.tration]
CHAPTER XXV.
THE ADDED NAME.
THAT same evening was fraught with memorable a.s.sociations to others beside Flossy Shipley. It began in gloom and unusual depression even to bright-faced Marion. The day had been a hard one in school. Those of the scholars who had been constant attendants at the meetings felt the inevitable sense of loneliness and loss that must follow the close of such unusual means of help.
I have actually heard some Christian people advance this fact, that there was a reaction of loneliness after such meetings closed, as a good reason why they were unwise efforts, demoralizing in their results. It is a curious fact, that such reasoners are never found to advocate the entire separation of family friends on the plea that a reunion followed by a separation is demoralizing in its results because it leaves an added sense of loneliness.
It is, perhaps, to be questioned whether loneliness is, after all, demoralizing in its effects. Be that as it may, many of the scholars felt it. Then there were some among their number who had persistently shunned the meetings and their influences, who, now that the opportunity was pa.s.sed, felt those stings of conscience that are sure to follow enlightened minds, who have persisted in going a wrong road.
Also there were those who had been almost persuaded, and who yet, so far as their salvation was concerned, were no nearer it that day than though they had never thought of the matter, for _almost_ never saves a soul.
All these influences combined served to make depression the predominant feeling. Marion struggled with it, and tried to be cheerful before her pupils, but sank into gravity and unusual sadness at every interval between the busy hours of the day.
Late in the afternoon she had a conversation with one of the girls which did not serve to encourage her heart. It was the drawing hour.
Large numbers of the young ladies in her room had gone to the studio with the drawing master; those few who remained were engaged in copying their exercises for the next morning"s cla.s.s. Marion was at leisure, her only duty being to render a.s.sistance in the matter of copying wherever a raised hand indicated that help was needed.
Answering one of these calls she found herself at the extreme end of the large room, quite near to Grace Dennis" desk, and in pa.s.sing she noticed that Gracie, while her book was before her and her pen in hand, was not writing at all, but that her left hand was shading a face that looked sad and pale, and covering eyes that might have tears in them. After fulfilling her duty to the needy scholar she turned back to Grace.
"What is it?" she said, softly, taking the vacant seat by Grace"s side, and touching tenderly the crown of hair that covered the drooping head.
Grace looked up quickly with a gleam of sunshine, through which shone a tear.
"It is a fit of the blues, I am almost afraid. I am very much ashamed of myself; I don"t feel so very often, Miss Wilbur. I think the feeling must be what the girls call blues; I am not sure."
"Do you feel in any degree sure what has caused such a remarkable disease to attack you?" Marion asked, in a low, tender, yet cheery and a half-amused tone.
The words made Gracie laugh, but the tenderness in the tone seemed to start another tear.
"You will be amused at me, Miss Wilbur, or ashamed of me, I don"t know which. I am ashamed of myself, but I do feel so forlorn and lonely."
"Lonely!" Marion echoed, with a little start. She realized that she herself knew in its fulness what that feeling was, but for Gracie Dennis, treasured as she was in an atmosphere of fatherly love, it was hard to understand it. "If I had my dear father I don"t think I should feel lonely," she said gently.
"I know," Grace answered; "he is the dearest father a girl ever had, but there is only a little bit of him mine, Miss Wilbur. I don"t mean that either; I am not selfish. I know he loves me with all his heart, but I mean his time is so very much occupied that he can only give me very little bits now and then. It has to be so; it is not his fault. I would not have him any different, even in this; but then if I had a sister, don"t you see how different it would be? or even a brother, or," and here Gracie"s head dropped low, and her voice quivered. "Miss Wilbur, if I had a mother, one who loved me, and would sympathize with me and help me, I think I would be the happiest girl in all the world."
There was every appearance that, with a few more words of tender sympathy, this young girl would lose all her self-control and be that which she so much shrank from, an object of general wonderment and conversation. Marion felt that she must bestow her sympathy sparingly.
"I dare say you would give yourself over to a hearty struggle not to hate her outright," she said, in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone. The sobs which were shaking the young girl beside her were suddenly checked.
Presently Gracie looked up, a gleam half of mirth, half of defiance in her handsome eyes. "I mean a _real_ mother," she said.
"Haven"t you one? Doesn"t she love her darling and watch over and wait for her coming?" The voice had taken on its tenderness again. Then, after a moment, Marion added:
"It is hard to realize, I know, but I believe it, and I look toward that thought with all my soul. You remember, Gracie, that I have nothing but that to feed on, no earthly friend to help me realize it."
Grace stole a soft hand into her teacher"s. "I wish you would love me very much," she said, brightly. "I wish you would let me love you. Do you know you help me every time you speak to me? and you do it in such strange ways, not at all in the direction that I am looking for help. I do thank you so much."
"Then suppose you prove it to me, by showing what an immaculate copy of your exercise you can hand in to-morrow. Don"t you know it is by just such common-place matters as that, that people are permitted to show their love and grat.i.tude and all those delightful things? That is what glorifies work."
Another clinging pressure of hands and teacher and pupil went about their duties. But though Marion had helped Gracie she had not helped herself, except that in a tired sort of way she realized that it was a great pleasure to be able to help anybody--most of all, this favorite pupil. Still the dreariness did not lessen. It went home with her to her dingy boarding-house, followed her to the gloomy dining-room and the uninviting supper-table.
The most that was the trouble with Marion Wilbur was, that she was tired in body and brain. If people only realized it, a great many mental troubles and trials result from overworked bodies and nerves. Still, it must be confessed that there were few, if any, outside influences that were calculated to cheer Marion Wilbur"s life.
You are to remember how very much alone she was. There were no letters to be watched for in the daily mails, no hopeful looking forward if one failed to come, no cheery saying to one"s heart, "Never mind, it will surely come to-morrow." This state is infinitely better than the hopeless glance one bestows upon the postman, realizing he is nothing to them.
No friends--father and mother gone so long ago! That of one there was no recollection at all, of the other, tender childhood memories, sweet and lasting and incomparably precious, but only memories. No sister, no brother, no cousins that had taken the place to her of sisters; only that old uncle and aunt, who were such staid and common and plodding people, that sometimes the very thought of them tired this girl so full of life and energy.
Girl I call her, but she had pa.s.sed the days of her girlhood. Few knew it; it was wonderful how young and fresh her heart had kept. That being the case, of course her face had taken the same impress. It was hard for Ruth Erskine to realize that her friend Marion was really thirteen years older than herself. There were times when Marion herself felt younger than Ruth did.
But the years were there, and in her times of depression, Marion realized it. So many of them recorded, and yet no friends to whom she had a right, feeling sure that nothing in human experience this side of death would be likely to come in and take her away from them. The very supper-table at that boarding-house was sufficient to add to her sense of desolation.
It is a pitiful fact that we are such dependent creatures that even the crooked laying of a cloth, and the coffee-stains and milk-stains and gravy-stains thereon, can add to our sense of friendlessness. Then, what is there particularly consoling or cheering in a cup of weak tea and a bit of bread a trifle sour, spread over by b.u.t.ter more than a trifle strong; even though it is helped down by some very dry bits of chipped beef? This was Marion"s supper.
The boarders were, some of them, cross, some of them simply silent and hurried, all of them damp, for they were every one workers out in the damp, dreary world; the most of them, in fact, I may say all of them, were very tired; yet many of them had work to do that very evening.
Marion ate her supper in silence, too; at least she bit at her bread and tried to swallow her simpering tea.
When her heart was bright and her plans for the evening definite and satisfactory, she could manage the sour bread and strong b.u.t.ter even, with something like a relish, but there was no use in trying them to-night. She even tormented herself with the planning of a dainty supper, accompanied by exquisite table arrangements such as she would manage for a sister, say, if she had one--a sister who had been in school all day and was wet and hungry and tired, if she had the room, and the table, and the china, and the materials out of which to construct the supper. She was reasonable enough to see that there were many ifs in the way, but the picture did not make the present supper relish.
She struggled to rally her weary powers. She asked the clerk next her if it had been a busy day, and she told the sewing-girl at her left about a lovely bouquet of flowers that one of the girls brought to school, and that she had meant to bring home to her, if it was presented. To be sure it was not. But the intention was the same, and the heart of the sewing-girl was cheered.
Finally Marion gave over trying to swallow the supper, and a.s.suring herself with the determination to go early to bed, and so escape faintness, she went up three flights of stairs to her room.
"When I am rich and a woman of leisure, I will build a house that shall have pleasant rooms and good bread and b.u.t.ter, and I will board school-teachers and sewing-girls and clerks for a song." This she said aloud.
Then she set about making a bit of blaze, or a great deal of smoke in the little imp of a stove. The stove was small and cracked and rusty, and could smoke like a furnace. What a contrast to the glowing coal-grate where Flossy at this hour toasted her pretty cheeks. Yet Marion, in her way, was less dismal than Flossy in hers.
It was not in Marion"s nature to shed any tears; instead, she hummed a few notes of a glorious old tune triumphant in every note, trying this to rob herself of gloom and cheat herself into the belief that she was not very lonely, and that her life did not stretch out before her as a desolate thing. She did not mean to give herself up to glooming, though she did hover over the little stove and lean her cheek on her hand and look at nothing in particular for a few minutes. What she said when she rallied from the silence was simply:
"What an abominable smoke you can make to be sure, Marion Wilbur, when you try. Hardly any one can compete with you in that line, at least."
Then she drew her school reports toward her, intending to make them out for the week thus far, but she scribbled on the fly-leaf with her pencil instead. She wrote her own name, "Marion J. Wilbur," a pretty enough name. She smiled tenderly over the initial of "J"--n.o.body knew what that was for.
Suppose the girls knew that it stood for "Josiah," her father"s name; that he had named her, after the mother was buried, Marion--that after the mother, Josiah--that after the father, Wilbur--the dear name that belonged to them both; in this way fancying in his gentle heart that he linked this child to them both in a way that would be dear to her to remember.
It was dear; she loved him for it; she thoroughly understood the feeling, but hardly any one else would. So she thought she had never given them a chance to smile over the queer name her father had given.