ALL AT ONCE.
There was a Monday morning train going down from Z——.
Mr. Ledwith and Kenneth Kincaid were in it, reading the morning papers, seated side by side.
It was nearly a week since the picnic, but the engagement of Rosamond and Kenneth had not transpired. Mr. Holabird had been away in New York. Of course nothing was said beyond Mrs. Holabird and Ruth and Dolly Kincaid, until his return. But Kenneth carried a happy face about with him, in the streets and in the cars and about his work; and his speech was quick and bright with the men he met and had need to speak to. It almost told itself; people might have guessed it, if they had happened, at least to see the two faces in the same day, and if they were alive to sympathetic impressions of other people's pain or joy. There are not many who stop to piece expressions, from pure sympathy, however; they are, for the most part, too busy putting this and that together for themselves.
Desire would have guessed it in a minute; but she saw little of either in this week. Mrs. Ledwith was not well, and there was a dress to be made for Helena.
Kenneth Kincaid's elder men friends said of him, when they saw him in these days, "That's a fine fellow; he is doing very well." They could read that; he carried it in his eye and in his tone and in his step, and it was true.
It was a hot morning; it would be a stifling day in the city. They sat quiet while they could, in the cars, taking the fresh air of the fields and the sea reaches, reading the French news, and saying little.
They came almost in to the city terminus, when the train stopped. Not at a station. There were people to alight at the last but one; these grew impatient after a few minutes, and got out and walked.
The train still waited.
Mr. Ledwith finished a column he was reading, and then looked up, as the conductor came along the passage.
"What is the delay?" he asked of him.
"Freight. Got such a lot of it. Takes a good while to handle."
Freight outward bound. A train making up.
Mr. Ledwith turned to his newspaper again.
Ten minutes went by. Kenneth Kincaid got up and went out, like many others. They might be kept there half an hour.
Mr. Ledwith had read all his paper, and began to grow impatient. He put his head out at the window, and looked and listened. Half the passengers were outside. Brake-men were walking up and down.
"Has he got a flag out there?" says the conductor to one of these.
"Don't know. Can't see. Yes, he has; I heard him whistle brakes."
Just then, their own bell sounded, and men jumped on board. Kenneth Kincaid came back to his seat.
Behind, there was a long New York train coming in.
Mr. Ledwith put his head out again, and looked back. All right; there had been a flag; the train had slackened just beyond a curve.
But why will people do such things? What is the use of asking? Mr. Ledwith still looked out; he could not have told you why.
A quicker motion; a darkening of the window; a freight car standing upon a siding, close to the switch, as they passed by; a sudden, dull blow, half unheard in the rumble of the train. Women, sitting behind, sprang up,—screamed; one dropped, fainting: they had seen a ghastly sight; warm drops of blood flew in upon them; the car was in commotion.
Kenneth Kincaid, with an exclamation of horror, clutched hold of a lifeless body that fell—was thrust—backward beside him; the poor head fractured, shattered, against the fatal window frame.
The eleven o'clock train came out.
People came up the street,—a group of gentlemen, three or four,—toward Mr. Prendible's house.
Desire sat in a back window behind the blinds, busy. Mrs. Ledwith was lying on the bed.
Steps came in at the house door.
There was an exclamation; a hush. Mr. Prendible's voice, Kenneth Kincaid's, Mr. Dimsey's, the minister's.
"O! How? "—Mrs. Prendible's voice, now.
"Take care!"
"Where are they?"
Mrs. Ledwith heard.
"What is the matter?"—springing up, with a sudden instinct of precognition.
Desire had not seen or heard till now. She dropped her work.
"What is it, mother?"
Mrs. Ledwith was up, upon the floor; in the doorway out in the passage; trembling; seized all over with a horrible dread and vague knowledge.
"Tell me what it is!" she cried, to those down below.
They were all there upon the staircase; Mrs. Prendible furthest up.
"O, Mrs. Ledwith!" she cried. "Don't be frightened! Don't take on! Take it easy,—do!"
Desire rushed down among them; past Mrs. Prendible, past the minister, straight to Kenneth Kincaid.
Kenneth took her right in his arms, and carried her into a little room below.
"There could have been no pain," he said, tenderly. "It was the accident of a moment. Be strong,—be patient, dear!"
There had been tender words natural to his lips lately. It was not strange that in his great pity he used them now.
"My father!" gasped Desire.
"Yes; your father. It was our Father's will."
"Help me to go to my mother!"
She took his hand, half blind, almost reeling.
And then they all, somehow, found themselves up-stairs.
There were moans of pain; there were words of prayer. We have no right there. It is all told.
"Be strong,—be patient, dear!"
It came back, in the midst of the darkness, the misery; it helped her through those days; it made her strong for her mother. It comforted her, she hardly knew how much; but O, how cruel it seemed afterward!
They went directly down to Boston. Mr. Ledwith was buried from their own house. It was all over; and now, what should they do? Uncle Titus came to see them. Mrs. Ripwinkley came right back from Homesworth. Dorris Kincaid left her summer-time all behind, and came to stay with them a week in Shubarton Place. Mrs. Ledwith craved companionship; her elder daughters were away; there were these five weeks to go by until she could hear from them. She would not read their letters that came now, full of chat and travel.
Poor Laura! her family scattered; her dependence gone; her life all broken down in a moment!
Dorris Kincaid did not speak of Kenneth and Rosamond. How could she bring news of others' gladness into that dim and sorrowful house?
Luclarion Grapp shut up her rooms, left her plants and her birds with Mrs. Gallilee, and came up to Shubarton Place in the beginning. There were no servants there; everything was adrift; the terrible blows of life take people between the harness, most unprovided, unawares.
It was only for a little while, until they could hear from the girls, and make plans. Grant Ledwith's income died with him; there was ten thousand dollars, life insurance; that would give them a little more than a sixth part of what his salary had been; and there were the two thousand a year of Uncle Titus; and the house, on which there was a twelve thousand dollar mortgage.
Mrs. Ledwith had spent her life in cutting and turning and planning; after the first shock was over, even her grief was counterpoised and abated, by the absorption of her thoughts into the old channels. What they should do, how they should live, what they could have; how it should be contrived and arranged. Her mind busied itself with all this, and her trouble was veiled,—softened. She had a dozen different visions and schemes, projected into their details of residence, establishment, dress, ordering,—before the letters came, bringing back the first terribleness in the first reception of and response to it, of her elder children.
It was so awful to have them away,—on the other side of the world! If they were only once all together again! Families ought not to separate. But then, it had been for their good; how could she have imagined? She supposed she should have done the same again, under the same circumstances.
And then came Mrs. Megilp's letter, delayed a mail, as she would have delayed entering the room, if they had been rejoined in their grief, until the family had first been gathered together with their tears and their embraces.
Then she wrote,—as she would have come in; and her letter, as her visit would have been, was after a few words of tender condolence,—and they were very sweet and tender, for Mrs. Megilp knew how to lay phrases like illuminating gold-leaf upon her meaning,—eminently practical and friendly, full of judicious, not to say mitigating, suggestions.
It was well, she thought, that Agatha and Florence were with her. They had been spared so much; and perhaps if all this had happened first, they might never have come. As to their return, she thought it would be a pity; "it could not make it really any better for you," she said; "and while your plans are unsettled, the fewer you are, the more easily you will manage. It seems hard to shadow their young lives more than is inevitable; and new scenes and interests are the very best things for them; their year of mourning would be fairly blotted out at home, you know. For yourself, poor friend, of course you cannot care; and Desire and Helena are not much come forward, but it would be a dead blank and stop to them, so much lost, right out; and I feel as if it were a kind Providence for the dear girls that they should be just where they are. We are living quietly, inexpensively; it will cost no more to come home at one time than at another;" etc.
There are persons to whom the pastime of life is the whole business of it; sickness and death and misfortune,—to say nothing of cares and duties—are the interruptions, to be got rid of as they may.
The next week came more letters; they had got a new idea out there. Why should not Mrs. Ledwith and the others come and join them? They were in Munich, now; the schools were splendid; would be just the thing for Helena; and "it was time for mamma to have a rest."
This thought, among the dozen others, had had its turn in Mrs. Ledwith's head. To break away, and leave everything, that is the impulse of natures like hers when things go hard and they cannot shape them. Only to get off; if she could do that!
Meanwhile, it was far different with Desire.
She was suffering with a deeper pain; not with a sharper loss, for she had seen so little of her father; but she looked in and back, and thought of what she ought to miss, and what had never been.
She ought to have known her father better; his life ought to have been more to her; was it her fault, or, harder yet, had it been his? This is the sorest thrust of grief; when it is only shock, and pity, and horror, and after these go by, not grief enough!
The child wrestled with herself, as she always did, questioning, arraigning. If she could make it all right, in the past, and now; if she could feel that all she had to do was to be tenderly sorry, and to love on through the darkness, she would not mind the dark; it would be only a phase of the life,—the love. But to have lived her life so far, to have had the relations of it, and yet not to have lived it, not to have been real child, real sister, not to be real stricken daughter now, tasting the suffering just as God made it to be tasted,—was she going through all things, even this, in a vain shadow? Would not life touch her?
She went away back, strangely, and asked whether she had had any business to be born? Whether it were a piece of God's truth at all, that she and all of them should be, and call themselves a household,—a home? The depth, the beauty of it were so unfulfilled! What was wrong, and how far back? Living in the midst of superficialities; in the noontide of a day of shams; putting her hands forth and grasping, almost everywhere, nothing but thin, hard surface,—she wondered how much of the world was real; how many came into the world where, and as, God meant them to come. What it was to "climb up some other way into the sheepfold," and to be a thief and a robber, even of life!
These were strange thoughts. Desire Ledwith was a strange girl.
But into the midst there crept one comfort; there was one glimpse out of the darkness into the daylight.
Kenneth Kincaid came in often to see them,—to inquire; just now he had frequent business in the city; he brought ferns and flowers, that Dorris gathered and filled into baskets, fresh and damp with moss.
Dorris was a dear friend; she dwelt in the life and the brightness; she reached forth and gathered, and turned and ministered again. The ferns and flowers were messages; leaves out of God's living Word, that she read, found precious, and sent on; apparitions, they seemed standing forth to sense, and making sweet, true signs from the inner realm of everlasting love and glory.
And Kenneth,—Desire had never lost out of her heart those words,—"Be strong,—be patient, dear!"
He did not speak to her of himself; he could not demand congratulation from her grief; he let it be until she should somehow learn, and of her own accord, speak to him.
So everybody let her alone, poor child, to her hurt.
The news of the engagement was no Boston news; it was something that had occurred, quietly enough, among a few people away up in Z——. Of the persons who came in,—the few remaining in town,—nobody happened to know or care. The Ripwinkleys did, of course; but Mrs. Ripwinkley remembered last winter, and things she had read in Desire's unconscious, undisguising face, and aware of nothing that could be deepening the mischief now, thinking only of the sufficient burden the poor child had to bear, thought kindly, "better not."
Meanwhile Mrs. Ledwith was dwelling more and more upon the European plan. She made up her mind, at last, to ask Uncle Titus. When all was well, she would not seem to break a compact by going away altogether, so soon, to leave him; but now,—he would see the difference; perhaps advise it. She would like to know what he would advise. After all that had happened,—everything so changed,—half her family abroad,—what could she do? Would it not be more prudent to join them, than to set up a home again without them, and keep them out there? And all Helena's education to provide for, and everything so cheap and easy there, and so dear and difficult here?
"Now, tell me, truly, uncle, should you object? Should you take it at all hard? I never meant to have left you, after all you have done; but you see I have to break up, now poor Grant is gone; we cannot live as we did before, even with what you do; and—for a little while—it is cheaper there; and by and by we can come back and make some other plan. Besides, I feel sometimes as if I must go off; as if there weren't anything left here for me."
Poor woman! poor girl, still,—whose life had never truly taken root!
"I suppose," said Uncle Titus, soberly, "that God shines all round. He's on this side as much as He is on that."
Mrs. Ledwith looked up out of her handkerchief, with which at that moment she had covered her eyes.
"I never knew Uncle Titus was pious!" she said to herself. And her astonishment dried her tears.
He said nothing more that was pious, however; he simply assured her, then and in conversations afterward, that he should take nothing "hard;" he never expected to bind her, or put her on parole; he chose to come to know his relatives, and he had done so; he had also done what seemed to him right, in return for their meeting him half way; they were welcome to it all, to take it and use it as they best could, and as circumstances and their own judgment dictated. If they went abroad, he should advise them to do it before the winter.
These words implied consent, approval. Mrs. Ledwith went up-stairs after them with a heart so much lightened that she was very nearly cheerful. There would be a good deal to do now, and something to look forward to; the old pulses of activity were quickened. She could live with those faculties that had been always vital in her, as people breathe with one live lung; but trouble and change had wrought in her no deeper or further capacity; had wakened nothing that had never been awake before.
The house and furniture were to be sold; they would sail in September.
When Desire perceived that it was settled, she gave way; she had said little before; her mother had had many plans, and they amused her; she would not worry her with opposition; and besides, she was herself in a secret dream of a hope half understood.
It happened that she told it to Kenneth Kincaid herself; she saw almost every one who came, instead of her mother; Mrs. Ledwith lived in her own room chiefly. This was the way in which it had come about, that nobody noticed or guessed how it was with Desire, and what aspect Kenneth's friendship and kindness, in the simple history of those few weeks, might dangerously grow to bear with her.
Except one person. Luclarion Grapp, at last, made up her mind.
Kenneth heard what Desire told him, as he heard all she ever had to tell, with a gentle interest; comforted her when she said she could not bear to go, with the suggestion that it might not be for very long; and when she looked up in his face with a kind of strange, pained wonder, and repeated,—
"But I cannot bear,—I tell you, I cannot bear to go!" he answered,—
"One can bear all that is right; and out of it the good will come that we do not know. All times go by. I am sorry—very sorry—that you must go; but there will be the coming back. We must all wait for that."
She did not know what she looked for; she did not know what she expected him to mean; she expected nothing; the thought of his preventing it in any way never entered into her head; she knew, if she had thought, how he himself was waiting, working. She only wanted him to care. Was this caring? Much? She could not tell.
"We never can come back," she said, impetuously. "There will be all the time—everything—between."
He almost spoke to her of it, then; he almost told her that the everything might be more, not less; that friendships gathered, multiplied; that there would be one home, he hoped, in which, by and by, she would often be; in which she would always be a dear and welcome comer.
But she was so sad, so tried; his lips were held; in his pure, honest kindness, he never dreamt of any harm that his silence might do; it only seemed so selfish to tell her how bright it was with him.
So he said, smiling,—
"And who knows what the 'everything' may be?" And he took both her hands in his as he said good-by,—for his little stops were of minutes on his way, always,—and held them fast, and looked warmly, hopefully into her face.
It was all for her,—to give her hope and courage; but the light of it was partly kindled by his own hope and gladness that lay behind; and how could she know that, or read it right? It was at once too much, and not enough, for her.
Five minutes after, Luclarion Grapp went by the parlor door with a pile of freshly ironed linen in her arms, on her way up-stairs.
Desire lay upon the sofa, her face down upon the pillow; her arms were thrown up, and her hands clasped upon the sofa-arm; her frame shook with sobs.
Luclarion paused for the time of half a step; then she went on. She said to herself in a whisper, as she went,—
"It is a stump; a proper hard one! But there's nobody else; and I have got to tell her!"
That evening, under some pretense of clean towels, Luclarion came up into Desire's room.
She was sitting alone, by the window, in the dark.
Luclarion fussed round a little; wiped the marble slab and the basin; set things straight; came over and asked Desire if she should not put up the window-bars, and light the gas.
"No," said Desire. "I like this best."
So did Luclarion. She had only said it to make time.
"Desire," she said,—she never put the "Miss" on, she had been too familiar all her life with those she was familiar with at all,—"the fact is I've got something to say, and I came up to say it."
She drew near—came close,—and laid her great, honest, faithful hand on the back of Desire Ledwith's chair, put the other behind her own waist, and leaned over her.
"You see, I'm a woman, Desire, and I know. You needn't mind me, I'm an old maid; that's the way I do know. Married folks, even mothers, half the time forget. But old maids never forget. I've had my stumps, and I can see that you've got yourn. But you'd ought to understand; and there's nobody, from one mistake and another, that's going to tell you. It's awful hard; it will be a trouble to you at first,"—and Luclarion's strong voice trembled tenderly with the sympathy that her old maid heart had in it, after, and because of, all those years,—"but Kenneth Kincaid"—
"What!" cried Desire, starting to her feet, with a sudden indignation.
"Is going to be married to Rosamond Holabird," said Luclarion, very gently. "There! you ought to know, and I have told you."
"What makes you suppose that that would be a trouble to me?" blazed Desire. "How do you dare"—
"I didn't dare; but I had to!" sobbed Luclarion, putting her arms right round her.
And then Desire—as she would have done at any rate, for that blaze was the mere flash of her own shame and pain—broke down with a moan.
"All at once! All at once!" she said piteously, and hid her face in Luclarion's bosom.
And Luclarion folded her close; hugged her, the good woman, in her love that was sisterly and motherly and all, because it was the love of an old maid, who had endured, for a young maid upon whom the endurance was just laid,—and said, with the pity of heaven in the words,—
"Yes. All at once. But the dear Lord stands by. Take hold of His hand,—and bear with all your might!"