Part 17 (1/2)
CHAPTER XVII.
GETTING READY TO LIVE.
Amid the laughter that followed this retort the company rose up from the table and went their various ways, to meet, perhaps, again.
”How on earth do you manage to keep so thoroughly posted in regard to Chautauqua affairs? One would think you were the wife of the private secretary. _I_ shouldn't have known whether the gates were to be opened or closed to-morrow.”
This from Ruth as the two girls paced the long piazza while waiting for the carriage which was to take them to the boat; for, having exhausted the resources of Mayville for entertainment, they were about to return to Chautauqua.
Marion laughed.
”I'm here in the capacity of a newspaper writer, please remember,” she answered promptly, ”and what I don't know I can imagine, like the rest of that brilliant fraternity. I am not really positive about a great many of the statements that I made, except on the general principle that these people belong to the cla.s.s who are very much given to doing according to their printed word. It says on the circulars that the gates will be closed on the Sabbath, and I dare say they will be. At least, we have a right to a.s.sume such to be the case until it is proven false.”
”What cla.s.s of people do you mean who are given to doing as they have agreed? Christian people, do you refer to?”
”Well, yes; the sort of Christians that one meets at such a gathering as this. As a rule, the namby-pamby Christians stay away from such places; or, if they come, they float off to Saratoga or some more kindred climate. I beg your pardon, Ruthie, that doesn't mean you, you know, because you are not one of any sort.”
”Then do you take it to be their religion which inclines you to trust to their word, without having an individual acquaintance with them?”
Marion shrugged her shoulders.
”Oh, bother!” she said, gayly, ”you are not turning theologian, or police detective in search of suspicious characters, are you? I never pretend to pry into my notions for and against people and things; if I was betrayed into anything that sounded like common sense I beg your pardon. I am out on a frolic, and mean to have it if there is any such thing.”
”Well, before you go back into absolute nonsense let me ask you one more question. Do you really feel as deeply as you pretended to that man, on all these questions of the Chautauqua conscience? I mean, is it a vital point in your estimation whether people go there to church on Sunday or not?”
Marion hesitated, and a fine glow deepened on her face as she said, after a little, speaking with grave dignity:
”I do not know that I can explain myself to you, Ruth, and I dare say that I seem to you like a bundle of contradictions; but it is a real pleasure to me to come in contact with people who have earnest faith and eager enthusiasm over _anything_, and principle enough to stand by their views through evil and good report. In this way, and to a great degree, this meeting is a positive delight to me, though I know personally as little about the feeling from which they think their actions take rise as any mortal can. Does that answer satisfy you, my blessed mother confessor? or are you more muddled than ever over what I do, and especially over what I do _not_ believe?”
”If I believed as much as you do I should look further.”
Ruth said this with emphasis; and there was that in it which, despite her attempts to throw it off, set Marion to thinking, and kept her wonderfully quiet during their return trip.
On the whole, the flight to Mayville was not viewed entirely in the light of a success. Ruth had been quiet and grave for some time, when she suddenly spoke in her most composed and decided voice:
”I shall go to Saratoga on Monday, whether any one else will or not; I shall find plenty of friends to welcome me, and I shall take the morning train from here.”
But she didn't.
Meantime Flossy's afternoon had been an uninterrupted satisfaction to her. She attended the children's meeting, and it was perfectly amazing to her newly awakened brain how many of the stories, used to point truths for the children, touched home to her.
Dr. Hurlbut, of Plainfield, seemed to have especially planned his address for the purpose of hitting at some of the markedly weak points in her character, though no doubt the good man would have been utterly amazed had he known her thoughts.
She listened and laughed with the rest over the story of the poor tailor who promised a coat to a customer for one, two and three weeks, heaping up his promises one on the other until he had a perfect pyramid of them, only to topple about his ears. She heard with the rest the magnificent voice ring out the solemn conclusion:
”Children, he did not mean to lie. He did not even think he was a liar.
He only _broke his promises_.”
They all heard, and I don't know how many s.h.i.+vered over it, but I _do_ know that to Flossy s.h.i.+pley it seemed as if some one had struck her an actual blow. Was it possible that the easy sentences, the easy promises, to ”write,” to ”come,” to ”bring this,” to ”tell that,” made so gracefully, sounding so kindly, costing so little because forgotten almost as soon as her head was turned away, actually belonged in that list described by the ugly word ”lie.” Flossy had been a special sinner in this department of polite wickedness because it just accorded with her nature; such promises were so easy to make, and seemed to please people, and were so easy to forget. Like the tailor, she hadn't meant to be a liar, nor dreamed that she was one.
But her wide-open ears took it all in, and her roused brain turned the thought over and over, until, be it known to you, that that girl's happy pastor, when he receives from her a decided, ”Yes, sir, I will do it,”
may rest a.s.sured that unless something beyond her control intervenes she will be at her post.