Real Folks Part 40

"Your mother has decided to sell the house on the 23d, it seems," he said.

"Yes; I have been out twice. I shall be able to go away by then; I suppose that is all she has waited for."

"Do you think you could be contented to come and live with me?"

"Come and _live_?"

"Yes. And let your mother and Helena go to Europe."

"O, Uncle Oldways! I think I could _rest_ there! But I don't want only to rest, you know. I must do something. For myself, to begin with. I have made up my mind not to depend upon my mother. Why should I, any more than a boy? And I am sure I cannot depend on anybody else."

These were Desire Ledwith's thanks; and Mr. Oldways liked them. She did not say it to please him; she thought it seemed almost ungrateful and unwilling; but she was so intent on taking up life for herself.

"You must have a place to do in,--or from," said Mr. Oldways. "And it is better you should be under some protection. You must consent to that for your mother's sake. How much money have you got?"

"Two hundred and fifty dollars a year. Of my own."

This was coming to business and calculation and common sense. Desire was encouraged. Uncle Oldways did not think her quite absurd.

"That will clothe you,--without much fuss and feathers?"

"I have done with fuss and feathers,"--Desire said with a grave smile, glancing at her plain white wrapper and the black shawl that was folded around her.

"Then come where is room for you and a welcome, and do as much more as you please, and can, for yourself, or for anybody else. I won't give you a cent; you shall have something to do for me, if you choose. I am an old man now, and want help. Perhaps what I want as much as anything is what I've been all my life till lately, pretty obstinate in doing without."

Uncle Oldways spoke short, and drew his breath in and puffed it out between his sentences, in his bluff way; but his eyes were kind, as he sat looking at the young girl over his hat and cane.

She thought of the still, gray parlor; of Rachel Froke and her face of peace; and the Quaker meeting and the crumbs last year; of Uncle Oldways' study, and his shelves rich with books; of the new understanding that had begun between herself and him, and the faith she had found out, down beneath his hard reserves; of the beautiful neighborhood, Miss Craydocke's Beehive, Aunt Franks' cheery home and the ways of it, and Hazel's runnings in and out. It seemed as if the real things had opened for her, and a place been made among them in which she should have "business to be," and from which her life might make a new setting forth.

"And mamma knows?" she said, inquiringly, after that long pause.

"Yes. I told you I would talk with her. That is what we came to. It is only for you to say, now."

"I will come. I shall be glad to come!" And her face was full of light as she looked up and said it.

Desire never thought for a moment of what her mother could not help thinking of; of what Mrs. Megilp thought and said, instantly, when she learned it three weeks later.

It is wonderful how abiding influence is,--even influence to which we are secretly superior,--if ever we have been subjected to, or allowed ourselves to be swayed by it. The veriest tyranny of discipline grows into one's conscience, until years after, when life has got beyond the tyranny, conscience,--or something superinduced upon it,--keeps up the echo of the old mandates, and one can take no comfort in doing what one knows all the time one has a perfect right, besides sound reason, to do. It was a great while before our grandmothers' daughters could peaceably st.i.tch and overcast a seam, instead of over-sewing and felling it. I know women who feel to this moment as if to sit down and read a book of a week-day, in the daytime, were playing truant to the needle, though all the sewing-machines on the one hand, and all the demand and supply of mental culture on the other, of this present changed and bettered time, protest together against the absurdity.

Mrs. Ledwith had heard the Megilp precepts and the Megilp forth-putting of things, until involuntarily everything showed itself to her in a Megilp light. The Megilp "sense of duty,"

therefore, came up as she unhesitatingly a.s.sented to Uncle Oldways'

proposal and request. He wanted Desire; of course she could not say a word; she owed him something, which she was glad she could so make up; and secretly there whispered in her mind the suggestion which Mrs. Megilp, on the other side of the water, spoke right out.

"If he wants her, he must mean something by her. He is an old man; he might not live to give her back into her mother's keeping; what would she do there, in that old house of his, if he should die, unless--he _does_ mean something? He has taken a fancy to her; she is odd, as he is; and he isn't so queer after all, but that his crotchets have a good, straightforward sense of justice in them.

Uncle t.i.tus knows what he is about; and what's more, just what he ought to be about. It is a good thing to have Desire provided for; she is uncomfortable and full of notions, and she isn't likely ever to be married."

So Desire was given up, easily, she could not help feeling; but she knew she had been a puzzle and a vexation to her mother, and that Mrs. Ledwith had never had the least idea what to do with her; least of all had she now, what she should do with her abroad.

"It was so much better for her that Uncle t.i.tus had taken her home."

With these last words Mrs. Ledwith rea.s.sured herself and cheered her child.

Perhaps it would have been the same--it came into Desire's head, that would conceive strange things--if the angels had taken her.

Mrs. Ledwith went to New York; she stayed a few days with Mrs.

Macmichael, who wanted her to buy lace for her in Brussels and Bohemian gla.s.s in Prague; then a few days more with her cousin, Geraldine Raxley; and then the _City of Antwerp_ sailed.

XX.

NEIGHBORS AND NEXT OF KIN.

"I'll tell you what to do with them, Luclarion," said Hazel briskly.

"Teach them to play."

"Music! Pianners!" exclaimed Luclarion, dismayed.

"No. Games. Teach them to have good times. That was the first thing ever we learnt, wasn't it, Dine? And we never could have got along without it."

"It takes _you_!" said Luclarion, looking at Hazel with delighted admiration.

"Does it? Well I don't know but it does. May I go, mother?

Luclarion, haven't you got a great big empty room up at the top of the house?"

Luclarion had.

"That's just what it's for, then. Couldn't Mr. Gallilee put up a swing? And a 'flying circle' in the middle? You see they can't go out on the roofs; so they must have something else that will seem kind of flighty. And _I'll_ tell you how they'll learn their letters. Sulie and I will paint 'em; great big ones, all colors; and hang 'em up with ribbons, and every child that learns one, so as to know it everywhere, shall take it down and carry it home. Then we will have marbles for numbers; and they shall play addition games, and multiplication games, and get the sums for prizes; the ones that get to the head, you know. Why, you don't understand _objects_, Luclarion!"

Luclarion had been telling them of the wild little folk of Neighbor Street, and worse, of Arctic Street. She wanted to do something with them. She had tried to get them in with gingerbread and popcorn; they came in fast enough for those; but they would not stay. They were digging in the gutters and calling names; learning the foul language of the places into which they were born; chasing and hiding in alley-ways; filching, if they could, from shops; going off begging with lies on their lips. It was terrible to see the springs from which the life of the city depths was fed.

"If you could stop it _there_!" Luclarion said, and said with reason.

"Will you let me go?" asked Hazel of her mother, in good earnest.

"'Twon't hurt her," put in Luclarion. "Nothing's catching that you haven't got the seeds of in your own const.i.tution. And so the catching will be the other way."

The seeds of good,--to catch good; that was what Luclarion Grapp believed in, in those dirty little souls,--no, those clean little _souls_, overlaid with all outward mire and filth of body, clothing, speech, and atmosphere, for a mile about; through which they could no more grope and penetrate, to reach their own that was hidden from them in the clearer life beyond, than we can grope and reach to other stars.

"I will get Desire," quoth Hazel, inspired as she always was, both ways.

Running in at the house in Greenley Street the next Thursday, she ran against Uncle t.i.tus coming out.

"What now?" he demanded.