Part 22 (1/2)
Separate accounts as well as short ones, made best friends. We knew they all thought father was unlucky to have to do with in such matters. He would still be the ”limited” man of the family. It would take two thirds of his inheritance to pay off those old '57 debts.
So we took our lovely Westover summer days as things we could not have any more of. And when you begin to feel that about anything, it would be a relief to have had the last of it. Nothing lasts always; but we like to have the forever-and-ever feeling, however delusive. A child hates his Sunday clothes, because he knows he cannot put them on again on Monday.
With all our troubles, there was one pleasure in the house,--Arctura.
We had made an art-kitchen; now we were making a little poem of a serving-maiden. We did not turn things over to her, and so leave chaos to come again; we only let her help; we let her come in and learn with us the nice and pleasant ways that we had learned. We did not move the kitchen down stairs again; we were determined not to have a kitchen any more.
Arctura was strong and blithe; she could fetch and carry, make fires, wash dishes, clean knives and bra.s.ses, do all that came hardest to us; and could do, in other things, with and for us, what she saw us do. We all worked together till the work was done; then Arctura sat down in the afternoons, just as we did, and read books, or made her clothes.
She always looked nice and pretty. She had large dark calico ap.r.o.ns for her work; and little white bib-ap.r.o.ns for table-tending and dress-up; and mother made for her, on the machine, little linen collars and cuffs.
We had a pride in her looks; and she knew it; she learned to work as delicately as we did. When breakfast or dinner was ready, she was as fit to turn round and serve as we were to sit down; she was astonished herself, at ways and results that she fell in with and attained.
”Why, where does the dirt go to?” she would exclaim. ”It never gethers anywheres.”
”GATHERS,--_anywhere_” Rosamond corrected.
Arctura learned little grammar lessons, and other such things, by the way. She was only ”next” below us in our family life; there was no great gulf fixed. We felt that we had at least got hold of the right end of one thread in the social tangle. This, at any rate, had come out of our year at Westover.
”Things seem so easy,” the girl would say. ”It is just like two times one.”
So it was; because we did not jumble in all the a.n.a.lysis and Compound Proportion of housekeeping right on top of the multiplication-table.
She would get on by degrees; by and by she would be in evolution and geometrical progression without knowing how she got there. If you want a house, you must build it up, stone by stone, and stroke by stroke; if you want a servant, you, or somebody for you, must _build_ one, just the same; they do not spring up and grow, neither can be ”knocked together.” And I tell you, busy, eager women of this day, wanting great work out of doors, this is just what ”we girls,” some of us,--and some of the best of us, perhaps,--have got to stay at home awhile and do.
”It is one of the little jobs that has been waiting for a good while to be done,” says Barbara; ”and Miss Pennington has found out another.
'There may be,' she says, 'need of women for reorganizing town meetings; I won't undertake to say there isn't; but I'm _sure_ there's need of them for reorganizing _parlor_ meetings. They are getting to be left altogether to the little school-girl ”sets.” Women who have grown older, and can see through all that nonsense, and have the position and power to break it up, ought to take hold. Don't you think so? Don't you think it is the duty of women of my age and cla.s.s to see to this thing before it grows any worse?' And I told her,--right up, respectful,--Yes'm; it wum! Think of her asking me, though!”
Just as things were getting to be so different and so nice on West Hill, it seemed so hard to leave it! Everything reminded us of that.
A beautiful plan came up for Ruth, though, at this time. What with the family worries,--which Ruth always had a way of gathering to herself, and hugging up, p.r.i.c.kers in, as if so she could keep the nettles from other people's fingers,--and her hard work at her music, she was getting thin. We were all insisting that she must take a vacation this summer, both from teaching and learning; when, all at once, Miss Pennington made up her mind to go to West Point and Lake George, and to take Penelope with her; and she came over and asked Ruth to go too.
”If you don't mind a room alone, dear; I'm an awful coward to have come of a martial family, and I must have Pen with me nights. I'm nervous about cars, too; I want two of you to keep up a chatter; I should be miserable company for one, always distracted after the whistles.”
Ruth's eyes shone; but she colored up, and her thanks had half a doubt in them. She would tell Auntie: and they would think how it could be.
”What a nice way for you to go!” said Barbara, after Miss Pennington left. ”And how nice it will be for you to see Dakie!” At which Ruth colored up again, and only said that ”it would certainly be the nicest possible way to go, if she were to go at all.”
Barbara meant--or meant to be understood that she meant--that Miss Pennington knew everybody, and belonged among the general officers; Ruth had an instinct that it would only be possible for her to go by an invitation like this from people out of her own family.
”But doesn't it seem queer she should choose me, out of us all?” she asked. ”Doesn't it seem selfish for me to be the one to go?”
”Seem selfish? Whom to?” said Barbara, bluntly. ”We weren't asked.”
”I wish--everybody--knew that,” said Ruth.
Making this little transparent speech, Ruth blushed once more. But she went, after all. She said we pushed her out of the nest. She went out into the wide, wonderful world, for the very first time in her life.
This is one of her letters:--
DEAR MOTHER AND GIRLS:--It is perfectly lovely here. I wish you could sit where I do this morning, looking up the still river in the bright light, with the tender purple haze on the far-off hills, and long, low, shady Const.i.tution Island lying so beautiful upon the water on one side, and dark s.h.a.ggy Cro' Nest looming up on the other. The Parrott guns at the foundry, over on the headland opposite, are trying,--as they are trying almost all the time,--against the face of the high, old, desolate cliff; and the hurtling buzz of the sh.e.l.ls keeps a sort of slow, tremendous time-beat on the air.