Part 22 (1/2)
”Possibly. If so, she was the sooner out of her misery. At any rate we are not to blame, since, as you have said, we didn't know. Now a funeral, such as you suggest, would be very costly, and would do no one any good. It would scarcely be in good taste, for, considering the poor woman's circ.u.mstances, it would be ostentatious.”
”Belle, Mr. Schriven is right,” said her father, in a tone of quiet authority.
”Let us rather consider the need of the daughter,” Mr. Schriven resumed. ”You say she is worn and weak from watching and work. A quarter of the money that a funeral would cost would give her two or three weeks in the country. And now,” he concluded impressively--his conscience needed a little soothing, and his purse was plethoric with the thousand dollars wrung from those who had the misfortune to be in his power--”I will pay her board at some quiet farmhouse for three weeks, and then she'll come back fresh and strong to her old place.”
Belle's eyes filled with tears of gladness. ”You are right, sir, and you are very kind and generous. I know just the place for her to go--the people we've been with all summer. They are kind, and will do everything for her, and take away her strange feeling at once. Oh, I'm so glad it's all ending so much better than I feared!
I thought this morning I could never be happy again, but you've made all seem so different and hopeful. I thank you, sir, over and over, and I'll do my best now at the store, and be respectful to every one.”
The man was touched. The warm, reflected glow of the girl's heart softened for a moment his own icy organ, and his eyes grew moist momentarily. ”You are a good child,” he said. ”Here are thirty-five dollars for your friend, for you've been a friend to her indeed.
Most girls would have let them starve for all they cared. Now send the girl off to the country, and as soon as I can I'll raise your wages to five dollars. I'd do it now, only the others would talk and say it wasn't customary to pay beginners so highly. Mr. Jocelyn, I congratulate you on the possession of such a daughter, and I sincerely hope you may soon retrieve your fortunes and regain the position to which I see that you both naturally belong,” and he bowed them out with a politeness and respect that were not by any means a.s.sumed.
Belle almost danced home by her father's side, so great was the rebound of her depressed feelings. Thirty-five dollars! How much that would do for poor Clara! Millie would help her make up her mourning, and she would have nothing to pay for but the material.
She would write to Mrs. Atwood that very night, and to Roger, telling him he must be kind to Clara, and take her out to drive.
Her heart fairly bubbled over with plans and projects for the girl whose ”place she had taken.”
The poor child had scarcely begun her letter to Mrs. Atwood before her head drooped, and Mildred said, ”Tell me what to say, Belle, and I'll write it all. You've done you part to-day, and done it well.”
”That's good of you, Millie. When I get sleepy it's no use to try to do anything. I'd go to sleep if the house was on fire. But you won't write to Roger, I'm afraid.”
”No. If he must be written to, you must do that.”
”Well, I will to-morrow. He'll do Clara more good than all the rest.”
Our story pa.s.ses hastily over the scenes that followed. A brief service was held over Mrs. Bute's remains by a city missionary, known to Mrs. Wheaton, who was present with Mrs. Jocelyn, Belle, and Mildred. Three or four neighbors from the tenement lent chairs and came in also. The girls at the ribbon counter clubbed together and sent an anchor of white flowers, and at the hour of the funeral they looked grave and were quiet in manner, thus taking part in the solemnity in the only way they could. In due time the city department upon which the duty devolved sent the ”dead wagon”; the morsel of human clay was returned to its kindred dust in ”Potter's Field,” a public cemetery on Hart's Island, in which are interred all who die in the city and whose friends are unable to pay for a grave or a burial plot. Clara, however, had not the pain of seeing her mother placed in the repulsive red box furnished by the department, for Mr. Jocelyn sent a plain but tasteful coffin, with the woman's age and name inscribed upon it.
Mrs. Wheaton went with the girl to the grave, and then brought her to her own little nook in the old mansion, for Clara had said she had no relatives she knew anything about except a few on her father's side, and she had rather go to a station-house than to them. ”Don't talk habout station 'ouses till yer can see vat I kin do for yer,”
the good woman had said in her hearty way, and she did play the good Samaritan so well, and poured the ”oil and wine” of kindness into the poor creature's wounds so effectually, that she began to change for the better daily.
Mildred redeemed Belle's promise, and between them all they soon fitted Clara for her trip to the country. By the time Mrs. Atwood's reply reached Mildred, and Roger's hearty answer came back in response to Belle's characteristic note, she was ready to go. ”There's a man's hand for you,” cried Belle exultantly as she exhibited Roger's bold chirography. ”It's a hand that can be depended upon, strong and ready.”
Mildred smiled as she replied, ”You're welcome to it, Belle.”
”You needn't smile so placidly,” she retorted, with an ominous nod.
”We are not through with Roger Atwood yet.”
Perhaps quotations from two letters written by Clara to Mildred and Belle, and received a week later, will form a satisfactory ending to this chapter. Clara had been taught to read and write in the public schools of the city, and but little more. In later years she had occasionally found opportunity to attend some of the night schools established for those whose only leisure came after the busy day was over, and so had learned to use her pen with tolerable correctness. In waiting upon the educated people who frequented the shop she had caught, with the aptness of an American girl, a very fair power of expressing herself in speech. Writing a letter, however, was a formidable affair, in which she had scarcely any experience. Her missives, therefore, were very simple, and somewhat defective in outward form, but they suggested some interesting facts.
”DEAR MILLIE (ran the first): I'm very sad and hapy. The Countrys like heven. All are so kind. Even the dog dosen't grole at me, and Mr. Roger says that's queer for he groles at everybody. I feel so much better, I don't know myself. I feel like takin depe breths of air all the time and I never tasted such milk. Every gla.s.s puts life in me. If I can get work up here I'll never go back to town and stand all day again. The girls up here have a chance to live--they haven't any chance at all in a store. The strongest will brake down and then they are good for nothing. I wish Belle could do something else. I wish thousands would go in the country and do work that would make us look like Susan. Mrs. Atwood thinks she can find me a place with kind people, where I'll be treted almost like one of the family. Anyway I've had enough of standing and bad air and starving and I don't see why working in a farmhouse ain't just as ladylike as wating on folks with the floorwalker awatchin you like a slave driver. Standing all day is deth to most girls and about the hardest deth they can die. I feel as if I could live to be a hundred up here.
”Millie, dear, I read the Bible you gave me and I pray for you and Belle every night and morning and He answers. I know it. I love you very much and I've good reason. Good by. CLARA BUTE.”
Her letter to Belle was more descriptive of her daily life, of the kindness she received on every hand. One brief extract from it will suffice:
”I've got well acquainted with Roger,” she wrote. ”He's easy to get acquainted with. Now I think of it though he says little or nothing about himself but he leads me to talk and tell about you all in a way that surprises me. If his interest was prying I'm sure I wouldn't have told him anything. I know well now it isn't. Does Millie know how he feels toward her? I saw it all last night. I was telling him about my past life and how poor and forlorn we had been and how I had told Millie all about it and then how Millie had just treted me as if I were as good as she was. As I talked he became so white I thought he'd faint. Suddenly he burst out despairingly, 'I hoped she was proud but she isn't--I could overcome pride. But what can I do when I'm just detested? There, I've made a fool of myself,' he said savagelike after a moment, and he hurried away. For the last two days he's been so quiet and looked so stern and sad that his family don't know what to make of him, but I know what's the matter, and I feel sorry for him, for he seems to me more like a man than any of the young fellows I've seen in town.
Don't tell Millie for I don't want to even seem to meddle.”
But Belle had no gift of reticence, and she not only showed her sister the letter, but overwhelmed her with reproaches for her ”heartless treatment of Roger.” As a natural result Mildred was only more irritated and prejudiced against the young man than ever.
”You are all absurdly unreasonable,” she cried. ”What have I ever done to make him turn white or red, or to 'burst out despairingly,'