Chapter 23 A Resolve
Chapter 23
A Resolve
Rebecca was married and had gone to her new home. The few guests for the occasion were likewise gone. The careworn, weary mother sat down on one of the empty chairs, and would gladly have wept, but many sorrows had come and gone over her when she had not dared to steal time to shed tears, and now they were frozen up in her heart. She felt two warm, kind hands on hers. They were Lucy’s. “Dear Mother,” she said, “we’ll be very happy, even if we do miss Rebecca.”
“What! Aren’t you going back to your uncle?”
“And leave you with all these cares? Of course not, Mother!”
“Dear child! dear child!” cried her mother, folding her tenderly in her arms. “I thank you a thousand times, but I will never consent to this sacrifice!”
“I am here, and I will never leave you!’ replied Lucy, firmly.
She felt tears dropping on her hands. “Ah! I am so glad Mother can shed tears again!” she thought. She looked at the drooping figure, which was becoming prematurely bent, and at the gray hairs which had crept in among those raven locks she used to think were so beautiful.
“I will never leave her again,” she said softly to herself. And once more, when she rose from her knees that night, she repeated, “No, I will never leave her!”
“I’m so glad that you’re going to stay home!” cried Hatty the next day. “Now I’ll have somebody to do my hair for me. It has looked like a fright ever since you went away.” So saying, Hatty placed brushes and combs in Lucy’s hands, and threw herself down in a low chair, with a new book in her lap. Lucy sighed a little, but in a moment, resisting the thought which had occasioned the sigh, she said pleasantly, “I hope that’s not the only reason you’re glad to have me home?”
“Oh, no! I have forty reasons,” returned Hatty. “To tell the truth, I wouldn’t be surprised if Uncle invited me to take your place. Why shouldn’t he? He’s rich and can do it as well as not. And I would make better use of my time than you did. I’d see everything and everybody, and learn the fashions. And now that I think of it, are you doing my hair in the latest style?”
“Oh, Hatty! What do we care for style?” asked Lucy. “I know nothing about it, anyway. I was busy with school.”
She felt pained by Hatty’s thoughtlessness. “I think in a year or two it would be a real use to you to go to Uncle’s,” she said.
“A year or two! Am I not as old now as you were when you went there with flying colors? And besides, you know very well that I came very near going in place of you at that time.”
“What a pity you didn’t go!” whispered one of the boys, mischievously. Hatty blushed and kept silent for at least two minutes. Nothing but pride and an old bonnet with an old faded ribbon had decided the question. Her uncle had invited her to accompany Lucy.
“A great deal depends on one’s dress,” she said to herself. “If I had had decent clothes, I would have gone, and would be there now.”
She might more properly have said, “A great deal depends on one’s self. If Lucy had been as vain as I, she never would have gone to visit city friends in just such garments as I hated to wear!”
“Well, Lucy,” she said, “I wonder at you, I must say. Judging from Uncle’s letters, they actually wanted to keep you there your whole life. And to think you would go and get homesick, and come driving back in such a hurry!” Twenty answers rose to Lucy’s lips, but she did not speak a one. She thought within herself, “What does it matter whether they know that it was not homesickness that brought me here? God knows, and that is enough!”
Yet all day the remembrance of Hatty’s last remark followed and grieved her. It does seem hard to be misunderstood by those one loves! And to have the great sacrifice she had made counted as nothing! Even laughed at as a ridiculous weakness! Poor Lucy felt as a little child does when he has had a fall and been bruised and wounded. She wanted to run right to her mother, put her head in her lap, and cry. But a glance at the pale, worn face restrained her, and when she could break away from her labors, she went to her room and told Jesus. When she returned to the family, her face seemed to shine. Who has not thus seen the human face transfigured, whose happy lot has made him one of a household of Christians?
Not knowing why they were attracted to her, the little ones who had looked at her shyly up until now, came and climbed in her lap, and patted her face with their soft, chubby hands, calling her by those sweet, endearing names that everybody loves, but not everybody can win. As they sat together, Arthur came in from school.
“Oh, Lucy! Are you really sitting down?” he cried. “I declare, I’ve hardly seen you off your feet since you got home!” He knelt before her, and throwing his arms around her, gave her a real, joyous, boyish welcome home that did her good. “I am so glad you came!” he said. “You don’t know how I’ve missed you! None of them are like you, I think.”
“Arthur, dear,” she said, “have you been quite well since I left home?” He looked up quickly. She would not let her face express the anxiety she felt.
“Oh, yes, pretty well, I guess. Just this cough, more or less. But that’s nothing.” He went off whistling.
“Has Arthur coughed a great while, dear?” she asked one of the little boys.
“Yes—no!” said the child, watching her face and instinctively shaping his answers to suit its varying expressions. Lucy sighed.
“I didn’t come home a moment too soon,” she thought. “Mother has grown ten years older since I went away. And Arthur’s cough! It almost kills me!” Her eyes filled with tears as she looked after him. He had grown very tall, but was thin and looked frail. Never had he looked so dear to her! As they sat together in the evening, she watched him closely. His forehead had developed rapidly.
“What are you looking at?” he asked a little abruptly, as he felt her examining him.
“Your forehead,” she answered. “It has grown so much! It’s as wide and high as Father’s almost.”
“How does home look to you, my dear?” asked her father.
“I was afraid to ask her that question,” said her mother.
“It looks pleasant, Father. More pleasant than ever. My little room, too! I forgot to thank you for fitting it up so nicely.
“Arthur papered it, with Hatty’s help,” said her mother, “and John made the bookcase. We’re getting quite proud of John. And we got two boxes down at the shoemaker’s and covered them with chintz. They’ll do for seats, and will hold some of your clothes.”
“And I buyed the tacks!” shouted Joseph.
“Yes, Joseph, dear little fellow, wanted to help the cause, and he went and picked berries and sold them, all himself. He got six cents for them and I let him buy the little tacks we used to fasten the chintz.” Lucy caught him up, and kissed him.
“How good it is to be home,” she said.
“Is New York as big as the world?” asked Joseph. They all laughed.
“Oh, it’s bigger than that,” said Hatty.
“Mother, I haven’t asked you yet about Mrs. Lee,” said Lucy. “Did you love her very much when you were at school together? She seems to love you dearly.”
“We were very close friends, though she was younger than the rest of our set, as we used to call it. She was a very lovely girl and had a fine mind. We corresponded a little after I was married, but I had many cares. You children took up my time and strength; and little by little, we wrote less regularly. But I love her just as much today as I did the day we parted, so manv many years ago. And just think! The other day Dr. White was here, and I urged him, as I often have, to tell me the name of the young man who ran over Arthur, and he told me it was Thornton—Edgar Thornton. And it occurred to me that he might be a younger brother of Mrs. Lee, for her father’s name was Edgar.”
“Then I have seen Dr. Thornton’s brother, after all!” said Lucy. “Yes, it must be the very same. He must have thought it very stupid of me, not to remember! But how would I? I never had heard his name.”
“Young ladies sometimes remember young gentlemen whose names they’ve never heard,” said her father, looking at her and smiling.
“I don’t remember him,” she answered simply, and her father withdrew his questioning gaze, with a satisfied air, that said, “She is a child still. How could I doubt it?”
“Were you surprised when you heard our Becky was getting married?” asked Hatty.
“Yes, indeed. I could hardly believe it. I know the boys used to joke about John Wright, but she never seemed to care anything about him. She seems still very young to be married.”
Her mother sighed. “I never can believe how old you are all getting,” she said. “When John Wright first spoke to me about marrying Rebecca, I thought he was joking. You know he is always full of fun.
“As full of fun as Rebecca is empty of it,” said her father.
“He has a good farm,” continued her mother, “and would not give me any peace until I would consent to their marriage. I hesitated on your account, dear, but it was no use.”
“She says I can come and live with her,” said one of the little boys.
“Unless I go,” said Hatty. Lucy looked at Hatty with surprise for a moment.
“Oh, don’t go, dear Hatty!” she said. There was so earnest a tone in these words, that Hatty was struck by them.
“Oh, I was only joking,” she said. “But why shouldn’t I go as well as you?” Lucy looked at Arthur; Hatty’s eye followed hers and rested on him.
“I don’t know what to make of you, Lucy,” she said.
“Now, Mother, I am going to be a real comfort to you,” said Lucy, glad to change the subject. “I’ve had a long rest, and I’ve been to school. Now I feel better because of it, and I want you to divide off a part of the work for me. Let me have all the care for the youngest children. I’ll wash and dress and put them to bed, make their clothes and all that, and you’ll then have time to take a little rest. Will you, dear Mother?“
“You’ve always been a comfort to me, dear child,” she answered.
“When I see how much there is to do, I wonder how I could stay away so long. But I did not realize it then.”
“It will be just like that when we get to heaven,” said Arthur, looking up from his book. “We won’t realize how much care and trouble and work people here have. If we could, we wouldn’t be happy. At least I wouldn’t.”
There was silence after this remark. Arthur returned at once to his book and no one seemed particularly struck with what he had said. But to Lucy, it had a voice unheard by the rest, just as his cough had. She put Joseph down from her lap and went quickly to her room—that same room where, a few years before, she had struggled with her terror and grief on his account. All that forgotten anguish came back; it seemed to her that she could not live it over again.
“Oh, how thankful I am that I came home! That I can stay and be with him; and if he is sick, take care of him!” She heard him coming up to his room and went out to meet him.
“You look pale, Lucy, dear,” said he, stopping by her door. “Don’t you feel well?”
“I’m so glad to get home! So thankful! Dear Arthur, you don’t know how hard it was not to see you for so long!”
“Yes, it was hard for me too. Next to Mother, I love you the best. I always have. And sometimes I think that when I’m a man and have a house of my own, you’ll come and live with me. Then we’ll read and study together—you on one side of the fire, and I on the other, and a little table between us! I often lie awake at night, thinking it over!” His face lit up as he spoke.
“He doesn’t look as sick as I thought,” said Lucy to herself. “His eyes are very bright. I never saw such eyes, they’re so big and dark, that they make him look pale and thin!” So for the moment, she comforted herself, not wanting to know the truth.