SWARMING.
Spring came on early, with heavy rains and freshets in many parts of the country.
It was a busy time at Z——.
Two things had happened there that were to give Kenneth Kincaid more work, and would keep him where he was all summer.
Just before he went to Z——, there had been a great fire at West Hill. All Mr. Roger Marchbanks's beautiful place was desolate. House, conservatories, stables, lovely little vine-covered rustic buildings, exquisitely tended shrubbery,—all swept over in one night by the red flames, and left lying in blackness and ashes.
For the winter, Mr. Marchbanks had taken his family to Boston; now he was planning eagerly to rebuild. Kenneth had made sketches; Mr. Marchbanks liked his ideas; they had talked together from time to time. Now, the work was actually in hand, and Kenneth was busy with drawings and specifications.
Down at the river, during the spring floods, a piece of the bridge had been carried away, and the dam was broken through. There were new mill buildings, too, going up, and a block of factory houses. All this business, through Mr. Marchbanks directly or indirectly, fell also into Kenneth's hands.
He wrote blithe letters to Dorris; and Dorris, running in and out from her little spring cleanings that Hazel was helping her with, told all the letters over to the Ripwinkleys.
"He says I must come up there in my summer vacation and board with his dear old Miss Waite. Think of Kentie's being able to give me such a treat as that! A lane, with ferns and birches, and the woods,—pine woods!—and a hill where raspberries grow, and the river!"
Mrs. Ledwith was thinking of her summer plans at this time, also. She remembered the large four-windowed room looking out over the meadow, that Mrs. Megilp and Glossy had at Mrs. Prendible's, for twelve dollars a week, in And. She could do no better than that, at country boarding, anywhere; and Mr. Ledwith could sleep at the house in Shubarton Place, getting his meals down town during the week, and come up and spend his Sundays with them. A bedroom, in addition, for six dollars more, would be all they would want.
The Ripwinkleys were going up to Homesworth by and by for a little while, and would take Sulie Praile with them. Sulie was ecstatically happy. She had never been out of the city in all her life. She felt, she said, "as if she was going to heaven without dying." Vash was to be left at Mrs. Scarup's with her sister.
Miss Craydocke would be away at the mountains; all the little life that had gathered together in the Aspen Street neighborhood, seemed about to be broken up.
Uncle Titus Oldways never went out of town, unless on business. Rachel Froke stayed, and kept his house; she sat in the gray room, and thought over the summers she had had.
"Thee never loses anything out of thy life that has been in," she said. "Summer times are like grains of musk; they keep their smell always, and flavor the shut-up places they are put away in."
For you and me, reader, we are to go to Z—— again. I hope you like it.
But before that, I must tell you what Luclarion Grapp has done.
Partly from the principle of her life, and partly from the spirit of things which she would have caught at any rate, from the Ripwinkley home and the Craydocke "Beehive,"—for there is nothing truer than that the kingdom of heaven is like leaven,—I suppose she had been secretly thinking for a good while, that she was having too easy a time here, in her first floor kitchen and her garden bedroom; that this was not the life meant for her to live right on, without scruple or question; and so began in her own mind to expect some sort of "stump;" and even to look about for it.
"It isn't as it was when Mrs. Ripwinkley was a widow, and poor,—that is, comparative; and it took all her and my contrivance to look after the place and keep things going, and paying, up in Homesworth; there was something to buckle to, then; but now, everything is eased and flatted out, as it were; it makes me res'less, like a child put to bed in the daytime."
Luclarion went down to the North End with Miss Craydocke, on errands of mercy; she went in to the new Mission, and saw the heavenly beauty of its intent, and kindled up in her soul at it; and she came home, time after time, and had thoughts of her own about these things, and the work in the world there was to do.
She had cleaned up and set things going at Mrs. Scarup's; she learned something in doing that, beyond what she knew when she set about it; her thoughts began to shape themselves to a theory; and the theory took to itself a text and a confirmation and a command.
"Go down and be a neighbor to them that have fallen among thieves."
Luclarion came to a resolution in this time of May, when everybody was making plans and the spring-cleaning was all done.
She came to Mrs. Ripwinkley one morning, when she was folding away winter clothes, and pinning them up in newspapers, with camphor-gum; and she said to her, without a bit of preface,—Luclarion hated prefaces,—
"Mrs. Ripwinkley, I'm going to swarm!"
Mrs. Ripwinkley looked up in utter surprise; what else could she do?
"Of course 'm, when you set up a Beehive, you must have expected it; it's the natural way of things; they ain't good for much unless they do. I've thought it all over; I'll stay and see you all off, first, if you want me to, and then—I'll swarm."
"Well," said Mrs. Ripwinkley, assenting in full faith, beforehand; for Mrs. Ripwinkley, if I need now to tell you of it, was not an ordinary woman, and did not take things in an ordinary selfish way, but grasped right hold of the inward right and truth of them, and believed in it; sometimes before she could quite see it; and she never had any doubt of Luclarion Grapp. "Well! And now tell me all about it."
"You see," said Luclarion, sitting down in a chair by the window, as Mrs. Ripwinkley suspended her occupation and took one by the bedside, "there's places in this town that folks leave and give up. As the Lord might have left and give up the world, because there was dirt and wickedness in it; only He didn't. There's places where it ain't genteel, nor yet respectable, to live; and so those places grow more disrespectable and miserable every day. They're left to themselves. What I think is, they hadn't ought to be. There's one clean spot down there now, in the very middle of the worst dirt. And it ain't bad to live in. That's started. Now, what I think is, that somebody ought to start another, even if its only a little one. Somebody ought to just go there and live, and show 'em how, just as I took and showed Mrs. Scarup, and she's been living ever since, instead of scratching along. If some of them folks had a clean, decent neighbor to go to see,—to drink tea with, say,—and was to catch an idea of her fixings and doings, why, I believe there'd be more of 'em,—cleaned up, you know. They'd get some kind of an ambition and a hope. Tain't enough for ladies—though I bless 'em in my soul for what I've seen 'em do—to come down there of a Fridays, and teach and talk awhile, and then go home to Summit Street and Republic Avenue, and take up their life again where they left it off, that is just as different as heaven is from 'tother place; somebody's got to come right down out of heaven, and bring the life in, and live it amongst them miserable folks, as the Lord Jesus Christ came and did! And it's borne in upon me, strong and clear, that that's what's got to be before all's righted. And so—for a little piece of it, and a little individual stump—I'm going to swarm, and settle, and see what'll come."
Mrs. Ripwinkley was looking very intently at Luclarion. Her breath went and came hurriedly, and her face turned pale with the grand surprise of such a thought, such a plan and purpose, so simply and suddenly declared. Her eyes were large and moist with feeling.
"Do you know, Luclarion," she exclaimed at last, "do you realize what this is that you are thinking of; what a step it would be to take,—what a work it would be to even hope to begin to do? Do you know how strange it is,—how almost impracticable,—that it is not even safe?"
"'Twasn't safe for Him—when He came into the world," Luclarion answered.
"Not to say I think there's any comparison," she began again, presently, "or that I believe there's anything to be really scared of,—except dirt; and you can clean a place round you, as them Mission people have done. Why, there ain't a house in Boston nicer, or sweeter, or airier even, than that one down in Arctic Street, with beautiful parlors and bedrooms, and great clean galleries leading round, and skylighted,—sky lighted! for you see the blue heaven is above all, and you can let the skylight in, without any corruption coming in with it; and if twenty people can do that much, or a hundred,—one can do something. 'Taint much, either, to undertake; only to be willing to go there, and make a clean place for yourself, and a home; and live there, instead of somewheres else that's ready made; and let it spread. And you know I've always looked forrud to some kind of a house-keep of my own, finally."
"But, Luclarion, I don't understand! All alone? And you couldn't use a whole house, you know. Your neighbors would be inmates. Why, it seems to me perfectly crazy!"
"Now, ma'am, did you ever know me to go off on a tangent, without some sort of a string to hold on to? I ain't goin' to swarm all alone! I never heard of such a thing. Though if I couldn't swarm, and the thing was to be done, I say I'd try it. But Savira Golding is going to be married to Sam Gallilee, next month; and he's a stevedore, and his work is down round the wharves; he's class-leader in our church, and a first-rate, right-minded man, or else Savira wouldn't have him; for if Savira ain't a clear Christian, and a doing woman, there ain't one this side of Paradise. Now, you see, Sam Gallilee makes money; he runs a gang of three hundred men. He can afford a good house, and a whole one, if he wants; but he's going in for a big one, and neighbors. They mean to live nice,—he and Savira; and she has pretty, tasty ways; there'll be white curtains, and plants blooming in her windows, you may make sure; she's always had 'em in that little up-stairs dress-making room of hers; and boxes of mignonette and petunias on the ledges; and birds singing in a great summer cage swung out against the wall. She's one of the kind that reaches out, and can't be kept in; and she knows her gifts, and is willing to go and let her light shine where it will help others, and so glorify; and Sam, he's willing too, and sees the beauty of it. And so,—well, that's the swarm."
"And the 'little round Godamighty in the middle of it,'" said Mrs. Ripwinkley, her face all bright and her eyes full of tears.
"Ma'am!"
Then Mrs. Ripwinkley told her Miss Craydocke's story.
"Well," said Luclarion, "there's something dear and right-to-the-spot about it; but it does sound singular; and it certainly ain't a thing to say careless."
Desire Ledwith grew bright and excited as the summer came on, and the time drew near for going to Z——. She could not help being glad; she did not stop to ask why; summer-time was reason enough, and after the weariness of the winter, the thought of Z—— and the woods and the river, and sweet evenings and mornings, and gardens and orchards, and road-side grass, was lovely to her.
"It is so pleasant up there!" she would keep saying to Dorris; and somehow she said it to Dorris oftener than to anybody else.
There was something fitful and impetuous in her little outbursts of satisfaction; they noticed it in her; the elder ones among them noticed it with a touch of anxiety for her.
Miss Craydocke, especially, read the signs, matching them with something that she remembered far back in the life that had closed so peacefully, with white hairs and years of a serene content and patience, over all unrest and disappointment, for herself. She was sorry for this young girl, for whom she thought she saw an unfulfilled dream of living that should go by her like some bright cloud, just near enough to turn into a baptism of tears.
She asked Desire, one day, if she would not like to go with her, this summer, to the mountains.
Desire put by the suggestion hastily.
"O, no, thank you, Miss Craydocke, I must stay with mamma and Helena. And besides," she added, with the strict, full truth she always demanded of herself, "I want to go to Z——."
"Yes," said Miss Craydocke.
There was something tender, like a shade of pity, in her tone.
"But you would enjoy the mountains. They are full of strength and rest. One hardly understands the good the hills do one. David did, looking out into them from Jerusalem. 'I will look to the hills, from whence cometh my strength.'"
"Some time," said Desire. "Some time I shall need the hills, and—be ready for them. But this summer—I want a good, gay, young time. I don't know why, except that I shall be just eighteen this year, and it seems as if, after that, I was going to be old. And I want to be with people I know. I can be gay in the country; there is something to be gay about. But I can't dress and dance in the city. That is all gas-light and get-up."
"I suppose," said Miss Craydocke, slowly, "that our faces are all set in the way we are to go. Even if it is—" She stopped. She was thinking of one whose face had been set to go to Jerusalem. Her own words had led her to something she had not foreseen when she began.
Nothing of such suggestion came to Desire. She was in one of her rare moods of good cheer.
"I suppose so," she said, heedlessly. And then, taking up a thought of her own suddenly,—"Miss Craydocke! Don't you think people almost always live out their names? There's Sin Scherman; there'll always be a little bit of mischief and original naughtiness in her,—with the harm taken out of it; and there's Rosamond Holabird,—they couldn't have called her anything better, if they'd waited for her to grow up; and Barb was sharp; and our little Hazel is witchy and sweet and wild-woodsy; and Luclarion,—isn't that shiny and trumpety, and doesn't she do it? And then—there's me. I shall always be stiff and hard and unsatisfied, except in little bits of summer times that won't come often. They might as well have christened me Anxiety. I wonder why they didn't."
"That would have been very different. There is a nobleness in Desire. You will overlive the restless part," said Miss Craydocke.
"Was there ever anything restless in your life, Miss Craydocke? And how long did it take to overlive it? It doesn't seem as if you had ever stubbed your foot against anything; and I'm always stubbing."
"My dear, I have stubbed along through fifty-six years; and the years had all three hundred and sixty-five days in them. There were chances,—don't you think so?"
"It looks easy to be old after it is done," said Desire. "Easy and comfortable. But to be eighteen, and to think of having to go on to be fifty-six; I beg your pardon,—but I wish it was over!"
And she drew a deep breath, heavy with the days that were to be.
"You are not to take it all at once, you know," said Miss Craydocke.
"But I do, every now and then. I can't help it. I am sure it is the name. If they had called me 'Hapsie,' like you, I should have gone along jolly, as you do, and not minded. You see you have to hear it all the time; and it tunes you up to its own key. You can't feel like a Dolly, or a Daisy, when everybody says—De-sire!"
"I don't know how I came to be called 'Hapsie,'" said Miss Craydocke. "Somebody who liked me took it up, and it seemed to get fitted on. But that wasn't when I was young."
"What was it, then?" asked Desire, with a movement of interest.
"Keren-happuch," said Miss Craydocke, meekly. "My father named me, and he always called me so,—the whole of it. He was a severe, Old-Testament man, and his name was Job."
Desire was more than half right, after all. There was a good deal of Miss Craydocke's story hinted in those few words and those two ancient names.
"But I turned into 'Miss Craydocke' pretty soon, and settled down. I suppose it was very natural that I should," said the sweet old maid, serenely.