Part 4 (1/2)
Then it turned out that so much sewing was not good for her; her health was threatened; she had been used to farm work and ”all out-doors.” It was a ”stump” again. That was all she called it; she did not talk piously about a ”cross.” What difference did it make?
There is another word, also, for ”cross” in Hebrew.
Luclarion came at last to live with Mrs. Edward s.h.i.+ere. And in that household, at eight and twenty, we have just found her.
III.
BY STORY-RAIL: TWENTY-SIX YEARS AN HOUR.
Laura s.h.i.+ere did not think much about the ”stump,” when, in her dark gray merino travelling dress, and her black ribbons, nicely appointed, as Mrs. Oferr's niece should be, down to her black kid gloves and broad-hemmed pocket-handkerchief, and little black straw travelling-basket (for morocco bags were not yet in those days), she stepped into the train with her aunt at the Providence Station, on her way to Stonington and New York.
The world seemed easily laid out before her. She was like a cousin in a story-book, going to arrive presently at a new home, and begin a new life, in which she would be very interesting to herself and to those about her. She felt rather important, too, with her money independence--there being really ”property” of hers to be spoken of as she had heard it of late. She had her mother's diamond ring on her third finger, and was comfortably conscious of it when she drew off her left-hand glove. Laura s.h.i.+ere's nature had only been stirred, as yet, a very little below the surface, and the surface rippled pleasantly in the sunlight that was breaking forth from the brief clouds.
Among the disreputable and vociferous crowd of New York hack drivers, that swarmed upon the pier as the _Ma.s.sachusetts_ glided into her dock, it was good to see that subduedly respectable and consciously private and superior man in the drab overcoat and the nice gloves and boots, who came forward and touched his hat to Mrs.
Oferr, took her shawl and basket, and led the way, among the aggravated public menials, to a handsome private carriage waiting on the street.
”All well at home, David?” asked Mrs. Oferr.
”All well, ma'am, thank you,” replied David.
And another man sat upon the box, in another drab coat, and touched _his_ hat; and when they reached Waverley Place and alighted, Mrs.
Oferr had something to say to him of certain directions, and addressed him as ”Moses.”
It was very grand and wonderful to order ”David” and ”Moses” about.
Laura felt as if her aunt were something only a little less than ”Michael with the sword.” Laura had a susceptibility for dignities; she appreciated, as we have seen out upon the wood-shed, ”high places, and all the people looking up.”
David and Moses were brothers, she found out; she supposed that was the reason they dressed alike, in drab coats; as she and Frank used to wear their red merinos, and their blue ginghams. A little spasm did come up in her throat for a minute, as she thought of the old frocks and the old times already dropped so far behind; but Alice and Geraldine Oferr met her the next instant on the broad staircase at the back of the marble-paved hall, looking slight and delicate, and princess-like, in the grand s.p.a.ce built about them for their lives to move in; and in the distance and magnificence of it all, the faint little momentary image of Frank faded away.
She went up with them out of the great square hall, over the stately staircase, past the open doors of drawing-rooms and library, stretching back in a long suite, with the conservatory gleaming green from the far end over the garden, up the second stairway to the floor where their rooms were; bedrooms and nursery,--this last called so still, though the great, airy front-room was the place used now for their books and amus.e.m.e.nts as growing young ladies,--all leading one into another around the skylighted upper hall, into which the suns.h.i.+ne came streaked with amber and violet from the richly colored gla.s.s. She had a little side apartment given to her for her own, with a recessed window, in which were blossoming plants just set there from the conservatory; opposite stood a white, low bed in a curtained alcove, and beyond was a dressing-closet.
Laura thought she should not be able to sleep there at all for a night or two, for the beauty of it and the good time she should be having.
At that same moment Frank and her Aunt Oldways were getting down from the stage that had brought them over from Ipsley, where they slept after their day's journey from Boston,--at the doorstone of the low, broad-roofed, wide-built, roomy old farm-house in Homesworth.
Right in the edge of the town it stood, its fields stretching over the south slope of green hills in sunny uplands, and down in meadowy richness to the wild, hidden, sequestered river-side, where the brown water ran through a narrow, rocky valley,--Swift River they called it. There are a great many Swift Rivers in New England. It was only a vehement little tributary of a larger stream, beside which lay larger towns; it was doing no work for the world, apparently, at present; there were no mills, except a little grist-mill to which the farmers brought their corn, cuddled among the rocks and wild birches and alders, at a turn where the road came down, and half a dozen planks made a bit of a bridge.
”O, what beautiful places!” cried Frank, as they crossed the little bridge, and glanced either way into a green, gray, silvery vista of shrubs and rocks, and rus.h.i.+ng water, with the white spires of meadow-sweet and the pink hardback, and the first bright plumes of the golden rod nodding and s.h.i.+ning against the shade,--as they pa.s.sed the head of a narrow, gra.s.sy lane, trod by cows' feet, and smelling of their milky breaths, and the sweetness of hay-barns,--as they came up, at length, over the long slope of turf that carpeted the way, as for a bride's feet, from the roadside to the very threshold. She looked along the low, treble-piled garden wall, too, and out to the open sheds, deep with pine chips; and upon the broad brown house-roof, with its long, gradual decline, till its eaves were within reach of a child's fingers from the ground; and her quick eye took in facilities.
”O, if Laura could see this! After the old shed-top in Brier Street, and the one tree!”
But Laura had got what the shed-top stood for with her; it was Frank who had hearkened to whole forests in the stir of the one brick-rooted fir. To that which each child had, it was already given.
In a week or two Frank wrote Laura a letter. It was an old-fas.h.i.+oned letter, you know; a big sheet, written close, four pages, all but the middle of the last page, which was left for the ”superscription.” Then it was folded, the first leaf turned down twice, lengthwise; then the two ends laid over, toward each other; then the last doubling, or rather trebling, across; and the open edge slipped over the folds. A wafer sealed it, and a thimble pressed it,--and there were twenty-five cents postage to pay. That was a letter in the old times, when Laura and Frank s.h.i.+ere were little girls. And this was that letter:--
DEAR LAURA,--We got here safe, Aunt Oldways and I, a week ago last Sat.u.r.day, and it is _beautiful_. There is a green lane,--almost everybody has a green lane,--and the cows go up and down, and the swallows build in the barn-eaves. They fly out at sundown, and fill all the sky up. It is like the specks we used to watch in the suns.h.i.+ne when it came in across the kitchen, and they danced up and down and through and away, and seemed to be live things; only we couldn't tell, you know, what they were, or if they really did know how good it was. But these are big and real, and you can see their wings, and you know what they mean by it. I guess it is all the same thing, only some things are little and some are big. You can see the stars here, too,--such a sky full. And that is all the same again.
There are beautiful roofs and walls here. I guess you would think you were high up! Harett and I go up from under the cheese-room windows right over the whole house, and we sit on the peak by the chimney. Harett is Mrs. Dillon's girl. Not the girl that lives with her,--her daughter. But the girls that live with people are daughters here. Somebody's else, I mean.
They are all alike. I suppose her name is Harriet, but they all call her Harett. I don't like to ask her for fear she should think I thought they didn't know how to p.r.o.nounce.
I go to school with Harett; up to the West District. We carry brown bread and b.u.t.ter, and doughnuts, and cheese, and apple-pie in tin pails, for luncheon. Don't you remember the brown cupboard in Aunt Oldways' kitchen, how sagey, and doughnutty, and good it always smelt? It smells just so now, and everything tastes just the same.