Part 21 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Leslie would not have asked her to be Jennie Wren, because she really has a lame foot; but when they told her about it, she said right off, ”O, how I wish I could be that!” She has not only the lame foot, but the wonderful ”golden bower” of suns.h.i.+ny hair too; and she knows the doll's dressmaker by heart; she says she expects to find her some time, if ever she goes to England--or to heaven. Truly she was up to the ”tricks and the manners” of the occasion; n.o.body entered into it with more self-abandonment than she; she was so completely Jennie Wren that no one--at the moment--thought of her in any other character, or remembered their rules of behaving according to the square of the distance. She ”took patterns” of Mrs. Lewis Marchbanks's tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs to her very face; she readied up behind Mrs. Linceford, and measured the festoon of her panier. There was no reason why she should be afraid or abashed; Maddy Freeman is a little lady, only she is poor, and a genius. She stepped right _out_ of d.i.c.kens's story, not _into_ it, as the rest of us did; neither did she even seem to step consciously into the grand Pennington house; all she did as to that was to go ”up here,” or ”over there,” and ”be dead,” as fresh, new-world delights attracted her. Lizzie Hexam went too; they belonged together; and T'other Governor would insist on following after them, and being comfortably dead also, though Society was behind him, and the Veneerings and the Podsnaps looking on. Mrs. Ingleside did not provide any Podsnaps or Veneerings; she said they would be there.

Now Eugene Wrayburn was Doctor John Hautayne; for this was only our fourth evening. n.o.body had anything to say about parts, except the person whose ”next” it was; people had simply to take what they were helped to.

We began to be a little suspicious of Doctor Hautayne; to wonder about his ”what next.” Leslie behaved as if she had always known him; I believe it seemed to her as if she always had; some lives meet in a way like that.

It did not end with parties, Miss Pennington's exogenous experiment.

She did not mean it should. A great deal that was glad and comfortable came of it to many persons. Miss Elizabeth asked Maddy Freeman to ”come up and be dead” whenever she felt like it; she goes there every week now, to copy pictures, and get rare little bits for her designs out of the Penningtons' great portfolios of engravings and drawings of ancient ornamentations; and half the time they keep her to luncheon or to tea. Lucilla Waters knows them now as well as we do; and she is taking German lessons with Pen Pennington.

It really seems as if the ”nexts” would grow on so that at last it would only be our old ”set” that would be in any danger of getting left out. ”Society is like a coral island after all,” says Leslie Goldthwaite. ”It isn't a rock of the Old Silurian.”

It was a memorable winter to us in many ways,--that last winter of the nineteenth century's seventh decade.

One day--everything has to be one day, and all in a minute, when it does come, however many days lead up to it--Doctor Ingleside came in and told us the news. He had been up to see Grandfather Holabird; grandfather was not quite well.

They told him at home, the doctor said, not to stop anywhere; he knew what they meant by that, but he didn't care; it was as much his news as anybody's, and why should he be kept down to pills and plasters?

Leslie was going to marry Doctor John Hautayne.

Well! It was splendid news, and we had somehow expected it. And yet--”only think!” That was all we could say; that is a true thing people do say to each other, in the face of a great, beautiful fact.

Take it in; shut your door upon it; and--think! It is something that belongs to heart and soul.

We counted up; it was only seven weeks.

”As if that were the whole of it!” said Doctor Ingleside. ”As if the Lord didn't know! As if they hadn't been living on, to just this meeting-place! She knows his life, and the sort of it, though she has never been in it with him before; that is, we'll concede that, for the sake of argument, though I'm not so sure about it; and he has come right here into hers. They are fair, open, pleasant ways, both of them; and here, from the joining, they can both look back and take in, each the other's; and beyond they just run into one, you see, as foreordained, and there's no other way for them to go.”

n.o.body knew it but ourselves that next night,--Thursday. Doctor Hautayne read beautiful things from the Brownings at Miss Pennington's that evening; it was his turn to provide; but for us,--we looked into new depths in Leslie's serene, clear, woman eyes, and we felt the intenser something in his face and voice, and the wonder was that everybody could not see how quite another thing than any merely written poetry was really ”next” that night for Leslie and for John Hautayne.

That was in December; it was the first of March when Grandfather Holabird died.

At about Christmas-time mother had taken a bad cold. We could not let her get up in the mornings to help before breakfast; the winter work was growing hard; there were two or three fires to manage besides the furnace, which father attended to; and although our ”ch.o.r.e-man” came and split up kindlings and filled the wood-boxes, yet we were all pretty well tired out, sometimes, just with keeping warm. We began to begin to say things to each other which n.o.body actually finished. ”If mother doesn't get better,” and ”If this cold weather keeps on,” and ”_Are_ we going to co-operate ourselves to death, do you think?” from Barbara, at last.

n.o.body said, ”We shall have to get a girl again.” n.o.body wanted to do that; and everybody had a secret feeling of Aunt Roderick, and her prophecy that we ”shouldn't hold out long.” But we were crippled and reduced; Ruth had as much as ever she could do, with the short days and her music.

”I begin to believe it was easy enough for Grant to say 'all _summer_,'” said Barbara; ”but _this_ is Valley Forge.” The kitchen fire wouldn't burn, and the thermometer was down to 3 above. Mother was worrying up stairs, we knew, because we would not let her come down until it was warm and her coffee was ready.

That very afternoon Stephen came in from school with a word for the hour.

”The Stilkings are going to move right off to New Jersey,” said he.

”Jim Stilking told me so. The doctor says his father can't stay here.”

”Arctura Fish won't go,” said Rosamond, instantly.

”Arctura Fish is as neat as a pin, and as smart as a steel trap,” said Barbara, regardless of elegance; ”and--since n.o.body else will ever dare to give in--I believe Arctura Fish is the very next thing, now, for us!”

”It isn't giving in; it is going on,” said Mrs. Holabird.