The Other Girls - Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney (free novels to read TXT) 📗

human affairs and interests are continually drifting, the far-apart persons that were to be the persons of one little history,--this same year had lifted Uncle Titus up. Out of his old age, out of his old house,--out from among his books, where he thought and questioned and studied, into the youth and vigor to which, underneath the years, he had been growing; into the knowledges that lie behind and beyond all books and Scriptures; into the house not made with hands, the Innermost, the Divine. Not _away_; I do not believe that. Lifted up, in the life of the spirit, if only taken within.

Outside,--just a little outside, for she loved him, and her life had grown into his and into his home,--Desire remained, in this home that he had given her.

People talked about her, eagerly, curiously. They said she was a great heiress. Her mother and Mrs. Megilp had written letters to her overflowing with a mixture of sentiment and congratulation, condolence and delight. They wanted her to come abroad at once, now, and join them. What was there, any longer, to prevent?

Desire wrote back to them that she did not think they understood. There was no break, she said; there was to be no beginning again. She had come into Uncle Titus's living with him; he had let her do that, and he had made it so that she could stay. She was not going to leave him now. She would as soon have robbed him of his money and run away, while the handling of his money had been his own. It was but mere handling that made the difference. _Himself_ was not dependent on his breath. And it was himself that she was joined with. "How can people turn their backs on people so?" She broke off with that, in her old, odd, abrupt, blindly significant fashion.

No: they could not understand. "Desire was just queerer than ever," they said. "It was such a pity, at her age. What would she be if she lived to be as old as Uncle Titus himself?" Mrs. Megilp sighed, long-sufferingly.

Mrs. Froke lived on in the gray parlor; Hazel Ripwinkley ran in and out; she hardly knew which was most home now, Greenley or Aspen Street. She and Desire were together in everything; in the bakery and laundry and industrial asylum that Luclarion Grapp's missionary work was taking shape in; in Chapel classes and teachers meetings; in a Wednesday evening Read-and-Talk, as they called it, that they had gathered some dozen girls and young women into, for which the dear old library was open weekly; in walks to and fro about the city "on errands;" in long plans and consultations, now, since so much power had been laid on their young heads and hands.

Uncle Oldways had made "the strangest will that ever was," if that were not said almost daily of men's last disposals. Out of the two sister's families, the Ripwinkleys and the Ledwiths, he had chosen these two girls,--children almost,--whom he declared his "next of kin, in a sense that the Lord and they would know;" and to them he left, in not quite equal shares, the bulk of his large property; the income of each portion to be severally theirs,--Desire's without restriction, Hazel's under her mother's guardianship, until each should come to the age of twenty-five years. If either of the two should die before that age, her share should devolve upon the other; if neither should survive it,--then followed a division among persons and charities, such, as he said, with his best knowledge, and the Lord's help, he felt himself at the moment of devising moved to direct. At twenty-five he counseled each heir to make, promptly, her own legal testament, searching, meanwhile, by the light given her in the doing of her duty, for whom or whatsoever should be shown her to be truly, and of the will of God--not man, her own "next of kin."

"For needful human form," he said, in conclusion, "I name Frances Ripwinkley executrix of this my will; but the Lord Himself shall be executor, above and through all; may He give unto you a right judgment in all things, and keep us evermore in his holy comfort!"

Some people even laughed at such a document as this, made as if the Almighty really had to do with things, and were surer than trustees and cunning law-conditions.

"Two girls!" they said, "who will marry--the Lord knows whom--and do, the Lord knows what, with it all!"

That was exactly what Titus Oldways believed. He believed the Lord _did_ know. He had shown him part; enough to go by to the end of _his_ beat; the rest was his. "Everything escheats to the King, at last."

And so Desire Ledwith and Hazel Ripwinkley sat in the old house together, and made their pure, young, generous plans; so they went in and out, and did their work, blessedly; and Uncle Titus's arm-chair stood there, where it always had, at the library table; and the Book of the Gospels, with its silver cross, lay in its silken cover where it always lay; and nothing had gone but the bent old form from which the strength had risen and the real presence loosened itself; and Uncle Titus's grand, beautiful life passed over to them continually; for hands on earth, he had their hands; for feet, their feet. There was no break, as Desire had said; it was the wonderful "fellowship of the mystery" which God meant, in the manifold wisdom that they know in heavenly places, when He ordained the passing over. We call it death; we _make_ it death; a separation. We leave off there. We gather up the tools that loved ones drop, and use them to carve out, selfishly, our own pleasures; we let their _life_ go, as if it were no matter to keep it up upon the earth. We turn our backs, and go our ways, and leave saints' hands outstretched invisibly in vain.

It was ever so bright and cheerful in this house into which death--that was such a birth--had come. These children were brimming over with happy thankfulness that Uncle Titus had loved and trusted them so. They never solemnized their looks or lengthened their accent when they spoke of him; he had come a great deal nearer to them in departing than he had ever known how to come, or they to approach him, before. Something young in his nature that had been hidden by gray hairs and slowness of years, sprang to join itself to their youth on which he had laid his bequest of the Lord's work. They ran lightly up and down where he had walked with measured gravity; they chatted and laughed, for they knew he was gladder than either; they sat in Desire's large, bright chamber at their work, or they went down to find out things in books in the library; and here, though nothing fell with any chill upon their spirits, they handled reverently the volumes he had loved,--they used tenderly the appliances that had been his daily convenience. With an unspoken consent, they never sat in the seat that had been his. The young heiresses of his place and trust made each a place for herself at opposite ends of the large writing-table, and left his chair before his desk as if he himself had just left it and might at any moment come in and sit again there with them. They always kept a vase of flowers beside the desk, at the left hand.

One day, that summer, they were up-stairs, sewing. Rachel Froke was busy below; they could hear some light movement now and then, in the stillness; or her voice came up through the open windows as she spoke to Frendely, the dear old serving woman, helping her dust and sort over glasses and jars for the yearly preserving.

I cannot tell you what an atmosphere of things and relations that had grown and sweetened and mellowed there was about this old home; what a lovely repose of stability, in the midst of the domestic ferments that are all about us in the changing households of these changing days. Frendely, who had served her maiden apprenticeship in a country family of England, said it was like the real old places there.

"Hazel," said Desire, suddenly,--(she did her _thinking_ deeply and slowly, but she had never got over her old suddenness in speech; it was like the way a good old seamstress I knew used to advise with the needle,--"Take your stitch deliberate, but pull out your thread as quick as you can,")--"Hazel! I think I may go to Europe after all."

"Desire!"

"And more than that, Hazie, you are to go with me."

"Desire Ledwith!"

"Yes, those are my names. I haven't any more; so your surprise can't expend itself any further in that direction. Now, listen. It's all to be done in our Wednesday evening Read-and-Talks. See?"

"O!"

"Very well; begin on interjections; they'll last some time. What I mean is, an idea that I got from Mrs. Hautayne, when I saw her last spring at the Schermans'. She says she always travelled so much on paper; and that paper travelling is very much like paper weddings; you can get all sorts of splendid things into it. There are books, and maps, and gazetteers, and pictures, and stereoscopes. Friends' letters and art galleries. I took it right up into my mind, silently, for my class, sometime. And pretty soon, I think we'll go."

"O, Desire, how nice!"

"That's it! One new word, or two, every time, and repeat. 'Now say the five?' as Fay's Geography used to tell us."

"O, Desire Ledwith, how nice!"

"Good girl. Now, don't you think that Mrs. Geoffrey and Miss Kirkbright would lend us pictures and things?"

"How little we seem to have seen of the Geoffreys lately! I mean, all this spring, even before they went down to Beverly," said Hazel, flying off from the subject in hand at the mention of their names. "I wonder why it is fixed so, Des', that the _best_ people--those you want to get nearest to--are so busy _being_ the best that you don't get much chance?"

"Perhaps the chance is laid up," said Desire, thoughtfully. "I think a good many things are. But to keep on, Hazel, about my plan. You know those two beautiful girls who came in Sunday before last, and joined Miss Kirkbright's class? Not _beautiful_, I don't mean exactly,--though one of them was that, too; but real"--

"Splendid!" filled out Hazel. "Real ready-made sort of girls. As if they'd had chapel all their lives, somehow. Not like first-Sunday girls at all."

"One of them _was_ a chapel girl. Miss Kirkbright told me. She grew up there till she was sixteen years old; then she went to live in the country. Now I must have those two in, you see. I don't know but Mr. Vireo would say it was making a feast for friends and neighbors, if I pick out the ready-made. But this sort of thing--you must have some reliance, you know; then there's something for the rest to come to, and grow to. I think I shall begin about it before vacation, while they're all together and alive to things. It takes so long to warm up to the same point after the break. We might have one meeting, just to organize, and make it a settled thing. O, how good it will be when Mr. Vireo comes home!"

If I had not so many things to tell before my story can be at all complete, I should like nothing better than to linger here in Desire Ledwith's room, where there was