"Yes; just that. In simplest words, changed and repeated often. It is the whole burden of my message. What other message is there, to men"s souls? "Repent, and receive the remission of your sins!" Build your city of refuge, Mr. Kirkbright, and show them a beginning of the fulfillment."
Whist and euchre tables not far off were breaking up, just before lunch, with laughter and raised voices. Ladies were coming down from the deck. In the stir, Mr. Vireo rose and went away. Christopher Kirkbright carried his Bible back into his state-room, and shut the door.
CHAPTER XII.
LETTERS AND LINKS.
That same September morning, Miss Euphrasia, sitting in her pretty corner room at Mrs. Georgeson"s,--just returned to her city life from the rest and sweetness of a country summer,--had letters brought to her door.
The first was in a thin, strong, blue envelope, with London and Liverpool postmarks, and "per Steamer Calabria," written up in the corner, business-wise, with the date, and a dash underneath. This she opened first, for the English postmarks, a.s.sociated with that handwriting, gave her a sudden thrill of bewildered surprise:--
"MY DEAR SISTER,--Within a very few days after this will reach you, I hope myself to land in America, and to see if, after all these years, you and I can do something about a home together. We learn one good of long separations, by what we get of them in this world. We can"t help beginning again, if not actually where we left off, at least with the thought we left off at, "live and fresh in our hearts. The thought, I mean, as regards each other; we have both got some thoughts uppermost by this time, doubtless, that we had not lived to then. At any rate, I have, who had ten years ago only the notions and dreams of twenty-one. I come straight to you with them, just as I went from you, dear elder sister, with your love and blessing upon me, into the great, working world.
"Send a line to meet me in New York at Frazer and Doubleday"s, and let me know your exact whereabouts. I found Sherrett here, and had a run to Manchester with him to see Amy. That"s the sort of thing I can"t believe when I do see it,--Mary"s baby married and housekeeping! I"m glad you are my elder, Effie; I shall not see much difference in you.
Thirty-one and forty-three will only have come nearer together. And you are sure to be what only such fresh-souled women as you _can_ be at forty-three."
With this little touch of loving compliment the letter ended.
Miss Euphrasia got up and walked over to her toilet-gla.s.s. Do you think, with all her outgoing goodness, she had not enough in her for this, of that sweet woman-feeling that desires a true beauty-blossoming for each good season of life as it comes? A pure, gentle showing, in face and voice and movement, of all that is lovely for a woman to show, and that she tells one of G.o.d"s own words by showing, if only it be true, and not a putting on of falseness?
If Miss Euphrasia had not cared what she would seem like in the eyes as well as to the heart of this brother coming home, there would have been something wanting to her of genuine womanhood. Yet she had gone daily about her Lord"s business, thinking of that first; not stopping to watch the graying or thinning of hairs, or the gathering of life-lines about eyes and mouth, or studying how to replace or smooth or disguise anything. She let her life write itself; she only made all fair, according to the sense of true grace that was in her; fair as she could with that which remained. She had neither neglected, nor feverishly contrived and worried; and so at forty three she was just what Christopher, with his Scotch second-sight, beheld her; what she beheld herself now as she went to look at her face in the gla.s.s, and to guess what he would think of it.
She saw a picture like this:--
Soft, large eyes, with no world-hara.s.s in them; little curves imprinted at the corners that may be as beautiful in later age as lip-dimples are in girlhood; a fair, broad forehead, that had never learned to frown; lines about mouth and chin, in sweet, honest harmony with the record of the eyes; no strain, no distortion of consciousness grown into haggard wornness; a fine, open, contented play of feature had wrought over all like a charm of sunshine, to soften and brighten continually. Her hair had been golden-brown; there was plenty of it still; it had kept so much of the gold that it was now like a tender mist through which the light flashes and smiles. Of all color-changes, this is the rarest.
Miss Euphrasia smiled at her own look. "It is the home-face, I guess; Christie will know it." Smiling, she showed white edges of perfect teeth.
"What a silly old thing I am!" she said, softly; and she blushed up and looked prettier yet.
"Why, I _will_ not be such a fool!" she exclaimed, then, really indignant; and sat down to read her second letter, which she had half forgotten:--
"BRICKFIELD FARMS, (near Tillington), Maine.
"DEAR MISS EUPHRASIA,--I have not written to you since we left Conway, because there seemed so little really to trouble you with; but your kind letter coming the other day made me feel as if I must have a talk with you, and perhaps tell you something which I did not fully tell you before. We left our address with Mr. Dill, although except you, I hardly know of anybody from whom a letter would be likely to come.
Isn"t it strange, how easily one may slip aside and drop out of everything? We heard of this place from some people who bad been to Sebago Lake and Pleasant Mountain, and up from there across the country to Gorham, and so round to Conway through the Glen.
"Mother was not well at Conway; indeed, dear Miss Euphrasia, she is more ill, perhaps, than I dare to think. She is very weak; I dread another move, and the winter is so near! May be the pleasant October weather will build her up; at any rate, we must stay here until she is much better. We have found such good, kind, plain people! I will tell you presently how nice it is for us, and the plans I have been able to make for the present. It has been a very expensive summer; we have moved about so much; and in all the places where we have been before, the board has been so high. At Lebanon and Sharon it was dreadful; I really had to worry mother to get away; and then Stowe was not much better, and at Jefferson the air was too bracing. At Crawford"s it was lovely, but the bill was fearful! So we drifted down, till we finished August in Conway, and heard of this. I wish we had known of it at the beginning; but then I suppose it would not have suited mother for all summer.
"I had a great worry at Sharon, Miss Euphrasia, and it has grown worse since. I can"t help being afraid mother has been dreadfully cheated. We got acquainted with some people there; a Mr. and Mrs. Farron Saftleigh, rich Westerners, who made a good deal of show of everything; money, and talk, and conjugal devotion, and friendship. Mrs. Saftleigh came a great deal to mother"s room, and gave her all the little chat of the place,--I"m afraid I don"t amuse mother myself as much as I ought, but some things do seem so tiresome to tell over, when you"ve seen more than enough of them yourself,--and she used to take her out to drive nearly every day.
"Well, it seemed that Mr. Saftleigh had gone out West only six years ago, and had made all his money since, in land and railroad business. Mrs. Saftleigh said that "whatever Farron touched was sure to double." She _meant_ money; but I thought of our perplexities when she said it, and he certainly has managed to double _them_. He went to New York two or three times while we were at the Springs; he was transacting railroad business; getting stock taken up in the new piece of road laid out from Latterend to Donnowhair; and he was at the head of a company that had bought up all the land along the route. "Sure to sell at enormous profits any time after the railroad was opened." Poor mother got so feverish about it!
She didn"t see why our little money shouldn"t be doubled as well as other people"s. And then she cried so about being left a widow, with n.o.body out in the world to get a share of anything for her; and Mrs. Saftleigh used to tell her that such work was just what friends were made for, and it was so providential that she had met her here just now; and she was always calling her "sweet Mrs. Argenter."
"n.o.body could help it; mother worried herself sick, when I begged her to wait till we could come home and consult some friend we knew. "The chance would be lost forever," she said; "and who could be kinder than the Saftleighs, or could know half so much? Mr. Farron Saftleigh risked his own money in it." And at last, she wrote home and had her Dorbury mortgage sold, and paid eight thousand dollars of it to Mr. Saftleigh, for shares in the railroad, and land in Donnowhair. And, dear Miss Euphrasia, that is all we"ve got now, except just a few hundred dollars on deposit in the Continental, and the other four thousand of the mortgage, that mother put into Manufacturers" Insurance stock, to pacify me. If the land _doesn"t_ sell out there in six months, as Mr. Saftleigh says it will, I don"t know where any more income for us is to come from.
"I am saving all I can here, for the winter _must_ cost. You would laugh if you knew how I am saving! I am helping Mrs.
Jeffords do her work, and she doesn"t charge me any board, and so I lay up the money without letting mother know it. I don"t feel as if that were quite right,--or comfortable, at least; but after all, why shouldn"t she be cheated a little bit the other way, if it is possible? That is why I hope we shall be here all through October.
"We are having lovely weather now; not a sign of frost.
Although this place is so far north, it is sheltered by great hills, and seems to lie under the lee, both ways, of high mountain ranges, so that the cold does not really set in very early. It is a curious place. I wish I had left room to tell you more about it. There is a great level basin, around which slope the uplands, rising farther and farther on every side except the south, until you get among the real mountain regions. On these slopes are the farms; the Jeffords", and the Applebees", and the Patchons", and the Stilphins". Aren"t they quaint, comfortable old country names? I think they only have such names among farmers. The name of the place,--or rather neighborhood, for I don"t know where the _place_ actually is--there are three places, and they are all four or five miles off--Mill Village, and Pemunk, and Sandon; the name of the neighborhood,--Brickfield Farms, comes from there having been brickmaking done here at one time; but it was given up.
The man who owned it got in debt, and failed, I believe; and n.o.body has taken hold of it again, because it is so far from lines of transportation; but there are some cottages about the foot of Cone Hill, where the laborers used to live; and a big queer, old red brick house, that looks as if it were walking up stairs,--built on flat, natural steps of the rock, and so climbing up, room behind room, with steps inside to correspond. I have liked so much to go through it, and imagine stories about it, though all the story there is, is that of Mr. Flavius Josephus Browne, the man of the brick enterprise, who built it in this odd way, and probably imagined a story for himself that he never lived out in it, because his money and his business came to an end. How strange it is that work doesn"t always make money, and that it takes so much combination to make anything worth while! I wonder that even men know just what to do. And as for women,--why, when they take to elbowing men out, what will it all come to?
"I have written on, until I have written off some of my heavy feelings that I began with. If I could only _talk_ to you, dear Miss Euphrasia, I think they would all go. But I will not trouble you any longer now; I am quite ashamed of the great packet this will make when it is folded up. But you told me to let you know all about myself, and I can"t help minding such an injunction as that!
"Yours gratefully and affectionately always, "SYLVIE ARGENTER."
Miss Kirkbright had not read this straight through without a pause.
Two or three times she had let her hands drop to her lap with the letter in them, and sat thinking. When she came to what Sylvie said about her "laughing to know how she had been saving," Miss Euphrasia stopped, not to laugh, but to wipe tears from her eyes.
"The poor, dear, brave little soul!" she said to herself. "And that blessed Mrs. Jeffords,--to let her think she is earning her board with ironing sheets, perhaps, and washing dishes! Km!"
That last unspellable sound was a half choke and half chuckle, that Miss Euphrasia surprised herself in making out of the sudden, mixed impulse to sob, and laugh, and to catch somebody in her arms and kiss that wasn"t there.
"If I were an angel, I suppose I _could_ wait," she went on saying to herself after that. "But even for them, it must be hard work some times. And so,--how the great Reasons Why flash upon one out of one"s own little experience!--of that wonderful, blessed Day, when all shall be made right, the angels in heaven know not, neither the Son, but the Father only! The Lord cannot even trust the pure human that is in Himself to dwell, separately, upon that End which is to be, but may not be yet!"
I do not suppose anything whatever could come into Miss Euphrasia"s life, or touch her with its circ.u.mstance, that she did not straightway read in it the wider truth beyond the letter. She was a Swedenborgian, not after Swedenborg, but by the living gift itself.
Her insight was no separate thing, taken up and used now and then, of a purpose. It was as different from that as eyes are from spectacles. She could not help her little sermons. They preached themselves to her and in her, continually. So, if we go along with her, we must take her with her interpretations. Some friend said of her once, that she was a life with marginal notes; and the notes were the larger part of it.
But Miss Euphrasia found a postscript, presently, to Sylvie"s letter, written hurriedly on the other side of the last leaf; as if she had made haste, before she should lose courage and change her mind about saying it:--
"Do you think it would be possible to find any sort of place in Boston where I could do something to help pay, this winter,--and will you try for me? I could sew, or do little things about a house, or read or write for somebody. I could help in a nursery, or teach, some hours in a day,--hours when mother likes to be quiet; and she would not know."
This was essential. "Mother must not know."
The finding of this postscript drove out of Miss Euphrasia"s mind another thought that had suddenly come into it as she turned the letter over in her fingers. It was some minutes before she went back to it; minutes in which she was quite absorbed with simple suggestions and peradventures in Sylvie"s behalf.
But--"Brickfield Farms? Sandon? Josephus Browne." When had she heard those names before? What hopeless piece of property was it she had heard her brother-in-law speak of long ago,--somewhere down East,--where there were old kilns and clay-pits? Something that had come into or pa.s.sed through his hands for a debt?
"There is a great tangling of links here. What are they shaken into my fingers for, I wonder? What is there here to be tied, or to be unraveled?"
For she believed firmly, always, that things did not happen in a jumble, however jumbled they might seem. Though she could scarcely keep two thoughts together of the many crowded ones that had come to her, one upon another, this strange morning, she was sure the Lord knew all about it, and that He had not sent them upon her in any real confusion. She knew that there was no precipitance--no inconsequence--with Him.
"They are threads picked out for some work that He will do," she said, as she tucked her brother"s letter into a low, broad basket beside the white and rose and violet wools with which she was at odd minutes crocheting a dainty footspread for an invalid friend, and put the other in her pocket.
"Now I will tie my bonnet on, and go, as I had meant, to see Desire.
That, also, is a piece of this same morning."
Miss Kirkbright, likewise, watched and learned a story that told and repeated itself as it went along, of a House that was building bit by bit, and of life that lay about it. Only hers was the house the Lord builds; and the stories of it, and all the sentences of the story, were the things He daily puts together.
CHAPTER XIII.