A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life - Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney (best contemporary novels .TXT) 📗

so to take out fresh sleeves and collars and pocket-handkerchiefs, and to wear one's nice white skirts. It is a Sunday put off, too probably, with but odds and ends of thought as well as apparel.

Leslie went to church, of course,--the Goldthwaites were always regular in this; and she wore her quiet straw bonnet. Mrs. Goldthwaite had a feeling that hats were rather pert and coquettish for the sanctuary. Nevertheless they met the Haddens in the porch, in the glory of their purple pheasant plumes, whereof the long tail-feathers made great circles in the air as the young heads turned this way and that, in the excitement of a few snatched words before they entered.

The organ was playing; and the low, deep, tremulous rumble that an organ gives sometimes, when it seems to creep under and vibrate all things with a strange, vital thrill, overswept their trivial chat and made Leslie almost shiver. "Oh, I wish they wouldn't do that," she said, turning to go in.

"What?" said Jeannie Hadden, unaware.

"Touch the nerve. The great nerve--of creation."

"What queer things Les' Goldthwaite says sometimes," whispered Elinor; and they passed the inner door.

The Goldthwaites sat two pews behind the Haddens. Leslie could not help thinking how elegant Mrs. Linceford was, as she swept in, in her rich black silk, and real lace shawl, and delicate, costly bonnet; and the perfectly gloved hand that upheld a bit of extravagance in Valenciennes lace and cambric made devotion seem--what? The more graceful and touching in one who had all this world's luxuries, or--almost a mockery?

The pheasant-plumed hats went decorously down in prayer-time, but the tail-feathers ran up perker than ever, from the posture; Leslie saw this, because she had lifted her own head and unclosed her eyes in a self-indignant honesty, when she found on what her secret thoughts were running. Were other people so much better than she? And _could_ they do both things? How much was right in all this that was outwardly so beguiling, and where did the "serving Mammon" begin?

Was everything so much intenser and more absorbing with her than with the Haddens? Why could she not take things as they came, as these girls did, or seemed to do?--be glad of her pretty things, her pretty looks even, her coming pleasures, with no misgivings or self-searchings, and then turn round and say her prayers properly?

Wasn't beauty put into the world for the sake of beauty? And wasn't it right to love it, and make much of it, and multiply it? What were arts and human ingenuities for, and the things given to work with? All this grave weighing of a great moral question was in the mind of the young girl of fifteen again this Sunday morning. Such doubts and balancings begin far earlier, often, than we are apt to think.

The minister shook hands cordially and respectfully with Mrs. Linceford after church. He had no hesitation at her stylishness and fineries. Everybody took everybody else for granted; and it was all right, Leslie Goldthwaite supposed, except in her own foolish, unregulated thoughts. Everybody else had done their Sunday duty, and it was enough; only she had been all wrong and astray, and in confusion. There was a time for everything, only her times and thoughts would mix themselves up and interfere. Perhaps she was very weak-minded, and the only way for her would be to give it all up, and wear drab, or whatever else might be most unbecoming, and be fiercely severe, mortifying the flesh. She got over that--her young nature reacting--as they all walked up the street together, while the sun shone down smilingly upon the world in Sunday best, and the flowers were gay in the door-yards, and Miss Milliken's shop was reverential with the green shutters before the windows that had been gorgeous yesterday with bright ribbons and fresh fashions; and there was something thankful in her feeling of the pleasantness that was about her, and a certainty that she should only grow morose if she took to resisting it all. She would be as good as she could, and let the pleasantness and the prettiness come "by the way." Yes, that was just what Cousin Delight had said. "All these things shall be added,"--was not that the Gospel word? So her troubling thought was laid for the hour; but it should come up again. It was in the "seeking first" that the question lay. By and by she would go back of the other to this, and see clearer,--in the light, perhaps, of something that had been already given her, and which, as she lived on toward a fuller readiness for it, should be "brought to her remembrance."

Monday brought the perfection of a traveler's morning. There had been a shower during the night, and the highways lay cool, moist, and dark brown between the green of the fields and the clean-washed, red-brick pavements of the town. There would be no dust even on the railroad, and the air was an impalpable draught of delight. To the three young girls, standing there under the station portico,--for they chose the smell of the morning rather than the odors of apples and cakes and indescribables which go to make up the distinctive atmosphere of a railway waiting-room,--there was but one thing to be done to-day in the world; one thing for which the sun rose, and wheeled himself toward that point in the heavens which would make eight o'clock down below. Of all the ships that might sail this day out of harbors, or the trains that might steam out of cities across States, they recked nothing but of this that was to take them toward the hills. There were unfortunates, doubtless, bound elsewhere, by peremptory necessity; there were people who were going nowhere but about their daily work and errands; all these were simply to be pitied, or wondered at, as to how they could feel _not_ to be going upon a mountain journey. It is queer to think, on a last Thursday in November, or on a Fourth of July, of States where there may not be a Thanksgiving, or of far-off lands that have no Independence day. It was just as strange, somehow, to imagine how this day, that was to them the culminating point of so much happy anticipation, the beginning of so much certain joy, could be otherwise, and yet be anything to the supernumerary people who filled up around them the life that centred in just this to them. Yet in truth it was, to most folks, simply a fair Monday morning, and an excellent "drying day."

They bounded off along the iron track,--the great steam pulse throbbed no faster than in time to their bright young eagerness. It had been a momentous matter to decide upon their seats, of which there had been opportunity for choice when they entered the car; at last they had been happily settled, face to face, by the good-natured removal of a couple of young farmers, who saw that the four ladies wished to be seated together. Their hand-bags were hung up, their rolls of shawls disposed beneath their feet, and Mrs. Linceford had taken out her novel. The Haddens had each a book also in her bag, to be perfectly according to rule in their equipment; but they were not old travelers enough to care to begin upon them yet. As to Leslie Goldthwaite, _her_ book lay ready open before her, for long, contented reading, in two chapters, both visible at once--the broad, open country, with its shifting pictures and suggestions of life and pleasantness; and the carriage interior, with its dissimilar human freight, and its yet more varied hints of history and character and purpose.

She made a story in her own mind, half unconsciously, of every one about her. Of the pretty girl alone, with no elaborate traveling arrangements, going only, it was evident, from one way-station to another, perhaps to spend a summer day with a friend. Of the stout old country grandmamma, with a basket full of doughnuts and early apples, that made a spiciness and orchard fragrance all about her, and that she surely never meant to eat herself, seeing, first, that she had not a tooth in her head, and also that she made repeated anxious requests of the conductor, catching him by the coat-skirts as he passed, to "let her know in season when they began to get into Bartley;" who asked, confidentially, of her next neighbor, a well-dressed elderly gentleman, if "he didn't think it was about as cheap comin' by the cars as it would ha' ben to hire a passage any other way?" and innocently endured the smile that her query called forth on half a dozen faces about her. The gentleman, _without_ a smile, courteously lowered his newspaper to reply that "he always thought it better to avail one's self of established conveniences rather than to waste time in independent contrivances;" and the old lady sat back,--as far back as she dared, considering her momentary apprehension of Bartley,--quite happily complacent in the confirmation of her own wisdom.

There was a trig, not to say prim, spinster, without a vestige of comeliness in her face, save the comeliness of a clear, clean, energetic expression,--such as a new broom or a bright tea-kettle might have, suggesting capacity for house thrift and hearth comfort,--who wore a gray straw bonnet, clean and neat as if it had not lasted for six years at least, which its fashion evidenced, and which, having a bright green tuft of artificial grass stuck arbitrarily upon its brim by way of modern adornment, put Leslie mischievously in mind of a roof so old that blades had sprouted in the eaves. She was glad afterwards that she had not spoken her mischief.

What made life beautiful to all these people? These farmers, who put on at daybreak their coarse homespun, for long hours of rough labor? These homely, home-bred women, who knew nothing of graceful fashions; who had always too much to do to think of elegance in doing? Perhaps that was just it; they had always something to do, something outside of themselves,--in their honest, earnest lives there was little to tempt them to a frivolous self-engrossment. Leslie touched close upon the very help and solution she wanted, as she thought these thoughts.

Opposite to her there sat a poor man, to whom there had happened a great misfortune. One eye was lost, and the cheek was drawn and marked by some great scar of wound or burn. One half his face was a fearful blot. How did people bear such things as these,--to go through the world knowing that it could never be pleasant to any human being to look upon them? that an instinct of pity and courtesy would even turn every casual glance away? There was a strange, sorrowful pleading in the one expressive side of the man's countenance, and a singularly untoward incident presently called it forth, and made it almost ludicrously pitiful. A bustling fellow entered at a way-station, his arms full of a great frame that he carried. As he blundered along the passage, looking for a seat, a jolt of the car, in starting, pitched him suddenly into the vacant place beside this man; and the open expanse of the large looking-glass--for it was that which the frame held--was fairly smitten, like an insult of fate, into the very face of the unfortunate.

"Beg pardon," the new comer said, in an off-hand way, as he settled himself, holding the glass full before the other while he righted it; and then, for the first time, giving a quick glance toward him. The astonishment, the intuitive repulsion, the consciousness of what he had done, betokened by the instant look of the