The Other Girls Part 61

"Not the very least little bit!" said Sylvie, emphatically; and then they all three laughed together.

I don't know why everything should have happened as it did, just in these few days; except--that this book was to be all printed by the twenty-third of April, and it all had to go in.

That very afternoon there came a letter to Miss Euphrasia from Mr.

Dakie Thayne.

He had found Mr. Farron Saftleigh in Dubuque; he had pressed him close upon the matter of his transactions with Mrs. Argenter; he had obtained a hold upon him in some other business that had come to his knowledge in the course of his inquiries at Denver: and the result had been that Mr. Farron Saftleigh had repurchased of him the railroad bonds and the deeds of Donnowhair land, to the amount of five thousand dollars; which sum he inclosed in his own cheek payable to the order of Sylvia Argenter.

Knowing, morally, some things that I have not had opportunity to investigate in detail, and cannot therefore set down as verities,--I am privately convinced that this little business agency on the part of Dakie Thayne, was--in some proportion at least,--a piece of a horse-shoe!

If you have not happened to read "Real Folks," you will not know what that means. If you have, you will now get a glimpse of how it had come to Ruth and Dakie that their horse-shoe,--their little section of the world's great magnet of loving relation,--might be made. Indeed, I do know, and can tell you, the very words Ruth said to Dakie one day when they had been married just three weeks.

"I've always thought, Dakie, that if ever I had money,--or if ever I came to advise or help anybody who had, and who wanted to do good with it,--that there would be one special way I should like to take.

I should like to sit up in the branches, and shake down fruit into the laps of some people who never would know where it came from, and wouldn't take it if they did; though they couldn't reach a single bough to pick for themselves. I mean nice, unlucky people; people who always have a hard time, and need to have a good one; and are obliged in many things to pretend they do. There are a good many who are willing and anxious to help the very poor, but I think there's a mission waiting for somebody among the pinched-and-smiling people.

I've been a Ruth Pinch myself, you see; and I know all about it, Mr.

John Westlock!"

So I know they looked about for crafty little chances to piece out and supplement small ways and means; to put little traps of good luck in the way for people to stumble upon,--and to act the part generally of a human limited providence, which is a better thing than fairy G.o.dmothers, or enchanted cats, or frogs under the bridge at the world's end, in which guise the gentle charities clothed themselves in the old elf fables, that were told, I truly believe, to be lived out in real doing, as much as the New Testament Parables were. And a great deal of the manifold responsibility that Mr. Dakie Thayne undertakes, as broker or agent in the concerns of others, is undertaken with a deliberate ulterior design of this sort. I think Mr. Farron Saftleigh probably was made to pay about three thousand dollars of the sum he had wheedled Mrs. Argenter out of. Dakie Thayne makes things yield of themselves as far as they will; he brings capacity and character to bear upon his ends as well as money; he knows his money would not last forever if he did not.

Mr. Sherrett and Rodney stayed at Hill-hope over the Sunday. Mr. and Mrs. Kirkbright arrived on Sat.u.r.day morning.

There was a first home-service in the Chapel-Room that looked out upon the Rock, and into which the conservatory already gave its greenness and sweetness, that first Sunday after Easter.

Christopher Kirkbright read the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for the day; the Prayer, that G.o.d "who had given his only Son to die for our sins, and to rise again for our justification, would grant them so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that they might always serve Him in pureness and truth"; the a.s.surance of "the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith in the Son of G.o.d," who came "not by water only, but by water and blood"; and that "the spirit and the water and the blood agree in one,"--in our redemption; the Story of that First Day of the week, when Jesus came back to his disciples, after his resurrection, and said, "Peace be unto you," _showing them his hands and his side_.

He spoke to them of the Blood of Christ, which is the Pain of G.o.d for every one of us; which touches the quick of our own souls where their life is joined to his or else is dead. Of how, when we feel it, we know that this Divine Pain comes down that we may die by it to sin and live again to justification, in pureness and truth, that the Lord shows us his wounds for us, and waits to p.r.o.nounce his peace upon us; because _He suffers_ till we are at peace. That so his goodness leads us to repentance; that the blood of suffering, and the water of cleansing, and the spirit of life renewed, agree in one, that if we receive the one,--if we bear the pain with which He touches us,--we shall also receive the other.

"Bear, therefore, whatever crucifixion you have to bear, because of your wrong-doing. We, indeed, suffer justly; but He, who hath done nothing amiss, suffers at our side. 'If we are planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection;' our old life is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed. 'We are dead unto sin, but alive unto G.o.d, through Jesus Christ our Lord.'"

Mary Moxall was there, clothed and in her right mind; her baby on her lap. Good Mrs. Crumford, the mother-matron, sat beside her.

Andrew Dorray, the plasterer, and his wife, Annie, were there. Men and women from the farmhouse and the cottages, dressed in their Sabbath best; and little children, looking in with steadfast, wondering eyes, at the open conservatory door, upon the vines and blooms steeped in suns.h.i.+ne, and mingling their sweet odors with the scent of the warm, moist earth in which they grew.

They would all have pinks and rosebuds to carry away with them, to remember the Sunday by, and to be forever linked, in their tender color and fragrance, with the dim apprehension of somewhat holy.

There would be an a.s.sociation for them of the heavenly things unseen with the heavenliest things that are seen.

Mr. Kirkbright had given especial pains and foresight to the filling of this little greenhouse. He meant that there should be a summer pleasantness at Hill-hope from the very first.

After dinner he and Desire walked up and down the long front upper gallery upon which their own rooms and their guest-rooms opened, and whence the many windows on the other hand gave the whole outlook upon Farm and Basin, the smoking kilns, the tidy little homes already established, and the buildings that were making ready for more.

Christopher Kirkbright told his wife of many things he hoped to accomplish. He pointed out here and there what might be done. Over there was a maple wood where they would have sugar-makings in the spring. There was a quarry in yonder hill. Down here, through that left hand hollow and ravine, would run their bit of railroad.

"A little world of itself might almost grow up here on these two hundred acres," he said.

"And for the home,--you must make that large and beautiful, Desire!

We are not shut up here to guard and rule a penitentiary; we are to bring the best and sweetest and most beautiful life possible to us, close to the life we want to help. There is room for them and us; there is opportunity for their world and ours to touch each other and grow toward one. We must have friends here, Daisy"; (she let _him_ call her "Daisy"; had he not the right to give her a new name for her new life?) "friends to enjoy the delicious summers, and to make the long winters full of holiday times. You must invent delights as well as uses: delights that will be uses. It must be so for _your_ sake; I must have my Desire satisfied,--content, in ways that perhaps she herself would not find out her need in."

"_Is_ not your Desire satisfied?"

"What a blessed little double name you have! Yes, Daisy, the very Desire of my heart has come to me!"

Rodney and Sylvie walked down again to the Cascade Rock, and finished their talk together,--this April number of it, I mean,--about the brown house and the three-windowed, sunny room, and the gra.s.s plot where they would play croquet, and the road to the mills that was shaded all the way down, so that she could walk with her bonnet off to meet him when he was coming up to tea. About the ivies that the "good Miss Goodwyns" had kept safe and thriving at Dorbury, and the furniture that Sylvie had stored in a loft in the Bank Block. How pretty the white frilled curtains would be in the porch room!

"And the interest of the five thousand dollars will be all I shall ever want to spend for anything!"

"We shall be quite rich people, Sylvie. We must take care not to grow proud and sn.o.bbish."

"We had much better walk than ride, Rodney. I think that is the riddle that all our spills have been meant to read us."