"It"s pleasant out of town these fall days; and I want you to see my house before I give it over. If I come for you to-morrow, will you ride out with me to Pomantic?"
Ray felt half a dozen things at that moment between his question and her reply. She felt her mother"s eyes just lifted at her, without another movement, over the silver rims of her spectacles; she felt Dot"s utter stillness; she felt her own heart spring with a single quick beat, and her cheeks grow warm, and a moisture at her fingers"
ends as they held work and needle determinedly, and she set two or three st.i.tches with instinctive resolution of not stopping. She felt, inwardly, the certainty that this would count for much in Mrs.
Ingraham"s plain, old-fashioned way of judging things; she was afraid of a misjudgment for Frank Sunderline, if he did not, perhaps, mean anything particular by it; she would have refused him ten times over, and let the refusal rest with her, sooner than have him blamed; for what business had she, after all,--
"Well, Ray?"
She felt his hand upon the back of her chair, close to her shoulder; she felt that he leaned down a little. She heard something in that "Well, Ray," that she could not turn aside, though in an hour afterward she would be taking herself to task that she had let it seem like "anything."
"I was thinking," she said, quietly. "Yes, I think I could go. Thank you, Frank."
Frank Sunderline was not sure, as he walked up Roulstone Street afterward, whether Ray cared much. She made it seem all matter of course, in a minute, with that calm, deliberate answer of hers. And she sat so still, and let him go out of the room with hardly another word or look. She never stopped sewing, either.
Well,--he did not see those ten st.i.tches! He might not have been the wiser if he had. They were not carpenter-work.
But Ray knew better than to pick them out, while her mother and Dot were by.
That next day was made for them.
Days are made for separate people, though they shine or storm over so many. Or the people are drifted into the right days; what is the difference?
I must stop for the thought here, that has to do with this question of rain and shine,--with need, and asking, and giving.
Prayers and special providences! Are these thrust out of the scheme, because there is a scheme, and a steadfastness of administration in G.o.d"s laws? "No use to pray for rain, or the calming of the storm, or a blessing on the medicine?" When it was all set going, was not the _prayer_ provided for? It was answered a million of years beforehand, in the heart of G.o.d, who put it into your heart and nature to pray. Long before the want or the sin, the beseeching for help or for forgiveness was antic.i.p.ated; provision was made for the undoing or the counteracting of the evil,--the healing of the wrong,--just as it should be longed for in the needing and repenting soul. The more law you have, the more all things come under its foresight.
So, under the dear Law,--which is Love, and cares for the sparrow,--came the fair October day, with its unflecked firmament, its golden, conquering warmth, its richness of scent and color; and they two went forth in it.
They went early, after dinner; so that the brightness might last them home again; and because the Newriches, in their afternoon drive, might be coming out from the city, perhaps, a little later, to look at their waistcoat-pocket plaything.
Mrs. Ingraham turned away from the bas.e.m.e.nt window with a long breath, as they drove off.
"Well, I suppose _that"s_ settled," she said, with the mother-sadness, in the midst of the not wishing it by any means to be otherwise, inflecting her voice.
"I don"t believe Ray thinks so," said Dot.
In some of the hundred little indirect ways that girls find the use of, Ray had managed to really impose this impression upon the st.u.r.dy mind of Dot, without discussion. If Dot had had the least bit of experience of her own, as yet, she would not have been imposed upon.
But Mrs. Ingraham had great reliance on Dorothy"s common sense, and she left no lee-way for uninitiation.
"Do you really mean to say, child," she asked, turning round sharply, "that Ray don"t suppose,--or don"t want,--or don"t intend--? She"s a goose if she don"t, then; and they"re both geese; and I shouldn"t have any patience with "em! And that"s _my_ mind about it!"
It is not such a very beautiful drive straight out to Pomantic over the Roxeter road. There are more attractive ones in many directions.
But no drive out of Boston is dest.i.tute of beauty; and even the long turnpike stretches--they are turnpike stretches still, though the Pike is turned into an Avenue, and built all along with blocks of little houses, exactly alike, in those places where used to be the flat, unoccupied intervals between the scattered suburban residences--have their breaks of hill and orchard and garden, and their glimpses across the marshes, of the sea.
Ray enjoyed every bit of it,--even the rows of new tenements with their wooden door-steps, and their disproportionate Mansard roofs that make them all look like the picture in "Mother Goose," of the boy under a big hat that might be slid down over him and just cover him up.
The rhyme itself came into Ray"s head, and she said it to her companion.
"Little lad, little lad, where were you born?
Far off in Lancashire, under a thorn, Where they sup b.u.t.termilk from a ram"s horn; And a pumpkin scooped, with a yellow rim, Is the bonny bowl they breakfast in."
"Those houses make me think of that," she said; "and the picture over it--do you remember?"
Everybody remembers "Mother Goose." You can"t quote or remind amiss from her.
"To be sure," Frank answered, laughing. "And the histories and the lives there carry out the idea. They all came from Lancashire, or somewhere across the big sea, and they were all born under the thorn, pretty much,--of poverty and pinches. But they sup their b.u.t.termilk, and the bowl is bonny, if it is only a pumpkin rind.
Isn"t that rhyme just the perfection of the glorifying of common things by imagination?"
"It always seems to me that living _might_ be pretty in such places.
All just alike, and snug together. I should think Mrs. Fitzpatrick and Mrs. Mahoney would have beautiful little ambitions and rivalries about their tidy parlors and kitchens, setting up housekeeping side by side, as they do. I should think they might have such nice neighborliness, back and forth. It looks full of all possible pleasantness; like the cottage quarters of the army families, down at Fort Warren, that you see so white and pretty among the trees, as you go by in the steamboat."
"Only they don"t make it out," said Frank Sunderline, "after all.
The prettiest part of it is the going by in the steamboat. Here, I mean. The "Mother Goose" idea is very suggestive; but if you went through that block, from beginning to end, I wonder how many "bonny bowls" you would really find, that you"d be willing to breakfast out of?"
"I wonder how many bonny bowls there"ll be, one of these days, in the cook"s closet of the grand house we"re going to?" said Ray.
"That"s it," said Sunderline. "It"s pretty to build, and it"s pretty to look at; but I should like to hear what your mother would say to the "conveniences." One convenience wants another to take care of it, till there"s such a compound interest of them that it takes a regiment just to man the pumps and pipes, and open and shut the cupboards. Living doesn"t really need so much machinery. But every household seems to want a little universe of its own, nowadays."
"I suppose they make it wrong side out," said Ray. "I mean all outside."
Further on, along the bay sh.o.r.es, and across the long bridge, and reaching over crests of hills that gave beautiful pictures of land and waterscape, the way was pleasanter and pleasanter. Other and different homesteads were set along the route, suggesting endless imaginations of the different character and living of the dwellers.
More than once, either Ray or Frank was on the point of saying, as they pa.s.sed some modest, pretty structure, with its field and garden-piece, its piazza, porch, or balcony, and its sunny windows,--"There! _that_ is a nice place and way to live!"
But a young man and woman are shy of sharing such imaginations, before the sharing is quite understood and openly promised. So, many times a silence fell upon their casual talk, when the same thing was in the thought of each.
For miles before they came to it, the sightly Newrich edifice gave itself, in different aspects, to the view. Mr. Newrich, himself, never saw anything else in his drives out, of sky, or hill, or water, after the first glimpse of "my house," and the way it "showed up" in the approach.
Men were busy wheeling away rubbish, as they drove in between the great stone posts that marked the entrance, where the elegant, light-wrought, gilded iron gates were not yet hung.
Other laborers were rolling the lawn and terraces, newly sown with English gra.s.s seed that was to come up in the spring, and begin to weave its green velvet carpet. Piles of bricks and boards were gathered at the back of the house and about the stables.
The plate-gla.s.s windows glittered in the sun. The tiled-roofs, with their towers and slopes, looked like those in pictures of palace buildings. It was a group,--a pile; under these roofs a family of five--Americans, republicans, with no law of primogeniture to conserve the estate beyond a single lifetime--were to live like a little royal household. And the father had made all his money in fifteen years in Opal Street. This country of ours, and the ways of it, are certainly pretty nearly the queerest under the sun, when one looks it all through and thinks it all over.
Frank Sunderline pointed out the lovely work of the pillars in the porched veranda; every pillar a triple column, of the slenderest grace, capitaled with separate devices of leaf and flower.
Then they went into the wide, high hall, and through the lower rooms, floored and ceiled and walled most richly; and up over the stately staircase, copied from some grand old English architecture; along the galleries into the wings, where were the sleeping and dressing-rooms; up-stairs, again, into other sleeping-rooms,--places for the many servants that there must be,--pressrooms, closets, trunk-rooms,--s.p.a.ce for stowing all the ample providings for use and change from season to season. Every frame and wainscot and panel a study of color and exact workmanship and perfect finish.
It was a "show house;" that was just what it was. "And I can"t imagine the least bit of home-iness in the whole of it," said Ray, coming down from the high cupola whence they had looked far out to sea, and over inland, upon blue hills and distant woods.
They stopped half way,--on the wide second landing where they had seen, as they went up, that the great window s.p.a.ce was open; the boards that had temporarily covered it having been removed, and the costly panes and sashes that were to fill it resting against the wall at one side.
"That is the greatest piece of nonsense in the whole house,"
Sunderline had said. "A crack in that would be the spoiling of a thousand dollars."
"How very silly," said Ray, quietly. "It is only fit for a church or a chapel."
"It shuts out the stables," said Sunderline. "Take care of that open frame," he had added, cautioning her.
Now, coming down, he stopped right here, and stood still with his back to the opening, looking across the front hall at some imperfection he fancied he detected in the joining of a carved cornice. Ray stood on the staircase, a little way up, facing the gorgeous window, and studying its glow of color.