ITS SEPARATE ELL
"Its no wonder they called it spring," said Prue, coming into the house with her jacket on her arm and her golden hair lying damp on her flushed forehead. "The way it is sprung on us is dreadful. It is a perfect dream of a day, but I'm half dead in these winter clothes, and the day before yesterday we had snow squalls!"
She dropped into a chair and threw open the window beside it.
"Sore throat weather, Prue!" warned her mother. "You must not sit in a draught when you are so heated. Come over here, dear, you will be cool enough after you have been in the house a little while. May has a trick of masquerading as July without warning us that she is going to change her rôle."
"But isn't it delicious?" cried Miss Charlotte, going to the window which Prue had left open as she obeyed her mother, and breathing in the damp, fresh odours of young grass, lilacs, blossoms, and all the haunting, indefinable scents of the spring. Then she half sighed, and stood leaning her head against the window-sash.
Rob came in from the kitchen with a voluminous gored apron embracing her closely from collar to hem, and with her bright hair more than usually ringed in moist tendrils, and with her right sleeve flour-dusted from her cake making.
"Dear me, how warm it is out by the stove!" she exclaimed. "And Lydia expects Demetrius this evening, so she brought me molasses instead of sugar, and forgot to take the draughts off, after her fire was burning up, so the oven is so scorching hot that my cake has to wait till it can get a chance to rise in the oven before it is burned to a crisp."
"I wonder if it is true that Demetrius is going to settle in Fayre?" laughed Prue.
"Perfectly true. Lydia says that he is going to be an auctioneer, and it seemed to me that I had never heard of such a happy choice of a profession," said Rob. "I think that affair is going to be serious."
"It couldn't be anything else with Lydia as one of the principals," commented Wythie on her way through the room with some branches of apple blossoms for the vases, just catching Rob's last words and their connection.
"We don't keep a servant—not even one; we have help," said Rob. "And she is much less helpful help for being so engrossed by Demetrius." She glanced at Cousin Peace as she spoke and instantly perceived the droop of the gentle head, the unwonted melancholy of her attitude.
"Cousin Peaceful, dearest, what are you thinking about?" she asked going over to put her arms around Miss Charlotte, oblivious to the floury record she was making on her cousin's soft grey waist.
"I am half afraid to tell you, for fear you will think me ungrateful, and——"
"Generally horrid," supplemented Rob. "So we shall, but never mind that!"
"You know how happy I am here, in my dear little lean-to room," Miss Charlotte went on, pressing the warm hands closer to her. "So you can't suspect me of lack of appreciation when I say that I am afraid that I want to take my insurance money and build a little home of my own on the site of the dear old one."
"I felt sure you were thinking of that, Charlotte, and dreading to say it," cried Mrs. Grey. "I couldn't anticipate you in speaking, but I have been sorry to see that you were longing for your own home and not daring to say so."
"Do you approve, Mary?" cried Miss Charlotte, wheeling about with girlish eagerness.
"No; I think you are better here, among us all, without any care, and knowing that you are blessing us every day, merely by living," said Mrs. Grey, rising to join Rob at Miss Charlotte's other side. "But I understand the love of place, and the love of home—the feeling that you want your own little nook, and, since you do feel thus, I approve of your building. Yes, I approve of the building; I do not approve of your wanting—oh, I don't mean that! I mean I think you are entitled to your own fireside, but I want to keep you."
"You are the best Mary of all the thousands in the world!" cried Miss Charlotte. "You are so sweetly reasonable! Yes, I love every one of you much more than you know, well as you know my love, and I love this dear little grey house—but I want my home."
"You shall have your own home!" cried Mrs. Grey, while Rob and Prue looked at each other aghast at the prospect of letting Cousin Peace slip away out of their household. "The first thing to be done is to consult on plans."
"I have made some plans myself," said Cousin Peace meekly.
"Oh, you sly, deceiving Cousin Peace!" cried Rob reproachfully, but not surprised to hear that the blind woman had been turning architect, for Miss Charlotte's blindness never seemed to be a deprivation of sight, so sensitive were her fingers and nerves. She now produced from her knitting-bag, which always hung on her left arm, two sheets of paper and spread them out lovingly. "I have been amusing myself with these at odd moments," she said. "I think this will make a charming and inexpensive little house."
Prue came over to look at the plans with the others. They were wavering as to line at times, but they were perfectly correct in dimensions, and were a design for a house most tasteful and comfortable, with all sorts of little nooks and contrivances to enhance the pleasure of living and the beauty of each room.
"It couldn't be nicer!" cried Rob, and immediately added: "Oh, my cake, my cake!" and fled. Her eyes were moist with tears when she came into the kitchen, and Lydia looked up with her serious air to inquire if anything had happened.
"Yes, Lyddie," said Rob. "It's all right, but it makes me heartsick. We've got to give up Cousin Charlotte. She loves us as much as we love her, but she wants to build a house for herself on her old place, and I suppose we must let her, because it is natural that she should hunger for her old surroundings."
"I think," said Lydia with that portentous manner of hers, that made the opening announcement that she thought seem little less than the declaration of an ecumenical council, "I think that she ought to do it. I think everybody that can get one had ought to have a home. I have been wondering why Miss Grey didn't do just what she's going to do. As for you, you can't really say you need her, with such a family as yours is. I said to Demetrius the last time he was out that if she only would build and go to housekeeping I should ask her to let us take care of her place, him outside, me inside. For I might as well tell you now, Roberta, and you can tell the rest, that Mr. Dennis and I are engaged to be married."
"I hope you will be very happy, Lydia," said Rob, not quite knowing how to reply.
"He's a man in a thousand, in a million," said Lydia impressively, "for all you took a dislike to him when you first saw him."
"Oh, but I didn't, Lydia! I only disliked his methods of transacting business," cried Rob. "He came too much as the winds come when navies are stranded."
Lydia passed over her denial with the dignified virtue of one who disdained casuistry. "You spoke up to him sharp, but he never laid it up against you," she said. "He has a disposition for which he had ought to be thankful to heaven, and I make no doubt he is. And he never practises any of those small vices which people allow themselves, and which pave the way to entire destruction—I allude to cigar smoking and the like."
Rob remembered the ashes in a certain jar in the sitting-room, left there by Basil and Bruce's cigars and Bartlemy's artist pipe, and was silent, examining her cake in the oven to hide her quivering lips.
"I am glad that he is a good man, Lydia, for I'm sure I don't see what you would do with an imperfect one," she said, and Lydia was gratified to hear the quaver in Rob's voice which she attributed to emotion. "And so you are going to be married, and want to live with Cousin Peace? Can your Demetrius do gardening?"
"He thoroughly understands all kinds of gardening," returned Lydia. "There are few auctions in Fayre, so between times he would be gardening, and I should do the housework. It would be a lucky arrangement for your cousin and—and us." And immovable Lydia faltered over the latter touching pronoun.
"And what would become of us without you, Lydia?" asked Rob. "Have you thought of us?"
"My mother would come to do for you," said Lydia, "and she knows how to do everything better than I do."
"Is she—younger than you, Lyddie?" asked Rob.
Lydia gave Rob one of the glances by which she frequently reproved frivolity. "A mother is never younger than her child," she said sternly. "But my mother is livelier than I am, and she is only middle-aged—forty-three."
"How can your mother be only forty-three?" cried Rob involuntarily.
"I am twenty-four, and she was nineteen years old when I was born," said Lydia. "It seems to me I smell that cake."
"So do I," said Rob, taking it out of the oven. "Well, we'll see about your mother, and all the rest of the plan when the time comes. Cousin Charlotte has not even begun to build. I must hurry off, or I shall not be ready when the guests come."
Rob ran out of the room, Lydia's voice pursuing her into the hall. "If she knows she can get Mr. Dennis and me she may hasten; her Annie that she had has gone away, and she would likely build quicker if she knew there was some one she could count on." Lydia called after her, and Rob burst in upon Wythie at her toilette in their bedroom with the surprising news of the past hour.
"Oh, dear," sighed Wythie while she laughed at Rob's account of Lydia's announcement, "how can Cousin Peace want to leave us and how can we let her go? Yet, of course, it is natural that she should cling to that spot where she was born and has always lived, and natural to want her own home. But that dear lean-to domestic chapel will be a sore loss to us! It seems to me that this has been a winter of uneventful events that count for a great deal."
"I suppose that is partly because we are at that age when everything seems significant," said Rob with great astuteness. "It will make a lot of difference to me just now if I can't get ready in time to be down at the station when the train arrives." And she frantically tried to find the button which was, naturally, on the other side of the band of the skirt, which she had put on wrong side out.
"'Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot into a left-hand shoe,'" quoted Wythie mildly as she went to rescue Rob from her plight. "There is time, Robin, if you only wouldn't try to take it all at once."
"Robins are always flustering birds," said Rob emerging, flushed, but grateful, from the skirt which Oswyth had righted. "But you know it would be hard not to be on hand to witness the arrival of the first instalments."
This was "the spring opening," as Rob called it, of "the separate ell" of the little grey house. In other words the Flinders' farm had been made ready, after trying delays, to receive the four crippled children with whom Hester's experiment was to begin, and they were to be brought to Fayre by a delegation from New York on the mid-afternoon train. Dr. Fairbairn had had an inspiration, so natural that every one wondered why it had not been part of the plan from the first: this was to install Mrs. Flinders as housekeeper in her own house. It involved the presence of her paralysed husband, but Polly was to remain with the Greys, an arrangement so much to the child's advantage that her mother gladly agreed to it. So the Flinders were already installed on the farm, which, after much discussion had received the name of Rob's suggesting, and was called Green Pastures.
"There is something so peaceful about it," said Rob, "and when we teach the children the child's own psalm they will take it as referring directly to themselves when they say: 'He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.' And if ever the attempt did grow into something important I for one would rather have it spoken of as Green Pastures than as the Hester Home for Incurables, or some such forbidding name—I hate the institutional sound!"
So Green Pastures it was, and a busy time its friends had had making it a real clover pasture for its little guests.
There was not to be a formal opening to which the public was invited; it was too simple and modest an attempt to be inaugurated ceremonially, and the youth of its founders made their elders desire to see its first beneficiaries installed in a way harmonious with that youth and inexperience. But on the other hand it was impossible to let the day go by without some special notice; the plan had grown too important for that. So the Baldwins and Mr. Armstrong were coming out from town, bringing the children; the Rutherfords were coming home for the occasion, and Mrs. Silsby, Aunt Azraella and Miss Charlotte with Mrs. Grey were to have a tea in Mrs. Flinders' former best parlour after the children had been fed and tucked away in the little white enamelled beds provided for them.
A rosy-cheeked young woman with experience in a children's hospital, had been engaged to look after these first arrivals, and stood ready to receive them in her white cap and apron when Wythie and Rob and Prue had left Green Pastures at noon, having satisfied themselves that nothing was wanting, and having hovered over the spotless, little waiting beds with something painfully sweet and tender stirring in their womanly girl-hearts.
"I haven't done anything for this except sympathize," said Wythie ruefully as she walked down the street to the station with Frances and Prue, all three radiant in festive garments. Rob hastened to overtake them, putting on a new pair of gloves as she came, for which, in spite of propriety, there had been absolutely no time to delay in the house.
"What has any of us done more than that, except Hester and Rob?" asked Frances. "Rob has earned money for it by her story-telling, and Hester has sacrificed for it, and founded it, but we have only encouraged it——"
"And danced and sang for it," added Prue.
"Your mother has done a great deal, and your father has given money enough to supplement all deficiencies in this beginning," said Wythie. "However, I am not envious; I only wish I were more useful."
"I think there isn't a bit of difference in the credit," said Frances, not merely sensibly but rather profoundly. "We all were ready to do what we could, and it is the will that counts, not opportunity. Hester and Rob are not like us—we are not brilliant like Rob, nor intense and tremendous like Hester; we are background figures, Oswyth."
"Well, of all things!" expostulated Rob. "Why we lean on Wythie like—like—oh, like gravity! I don't mean seriousness, because for that we should have to lean on Lydia, but gravitation gravity. She is our pillar of reliance, and our pillow of soothing in the little grey house. You know that as well as I do, Francie. And as to you, you founded my story-telling, and you are always a rock of common sense and efficiency."
"I'm afraid I shouldn't like too efficient a rock, Rob; it sounds formidable. But you needn't try to console me; I don't need consoling. I accepted our relative positions when I was five years old, and it doesn't annoy me now. Besides, though mysticism and occult influences are not much in my line, I do have a half belief in the power of strong intentions and profound feeling to set in motion waves that bring about the end for which we can only feel and long. I can't express it clearly, but I mean I half believe that our united interest has a kind of power for good; it's like wireless electricity, used as a force, instead of to carry messages."
"Mercy upon us, Frances!" cried Rob, pretending to be stunned, though she perfectly understood what Frances meant. "I feel as if you were the chela and I were Kim! Aren't they mahatmas or something, who send down influences? You're an Indian mystic—I hope not an Indian fakir."
But Prue halted in her walk for a moment, holding her golden head high. "I know exactly what Frances means," she said, "and I believe it, too. Only I believe one all alone can make what she wants come to her, without any union of minds."
Wythie turned to look with amazement at the tall girl whom she still regarded as her baby sister. She did not speak, but Rob uttered her thought for her.
"That it is only another way of saying that you feel that your will is very strong, my Prudy, so strong that you can't imagine yourself balked. But many a strong willed person has tasted bitter defeat: take care what you set your will upon," she said.
Prue tossed her head, but did not reply, and the whistle of the train half a mile away quickened the girls' steps and silenced their tongues.
It was curious to see the arrival of the party whom they had gone to meet. Mr. Baldwin handed down his wife and daughter; Mr. Armstrong followed, and then came the three Rutherford boys and Lester Baldwin, each bearing in his arms a child whose thin hands were clasped behind his neck, and whose wizened face looked dully upon the scene upon which they were appearing.
"I feel as if I were taking part in a tableau representing the Romans carrying off the Sabine maidens," said Bruce as soon as he was within speaking distance.
Rob laughed. "The Sabines didn't need robust warriors to steal them," she said, "if they looked like this. Aunt Azraella has sent Aaron with the carriage for the children, because it is more comfortable than these station things, which the rest of us are going to take."
"Wythie, Hester, Rob and Frances had better go up with the children," said Mr. Baldwin. "They will ride more comfortably in their laps."
"Of course they will," said Bruce. "Come on cushions—aren't you to be temporarily regarded in that light?"
Hester took on her lap the only little boy of the pathetic group, the child whose discovery had inspired and directed her vague dissatisfaction towards this charity, and over whom she had been keeping watch ever since. Wythie, Rob and Frances received the three little girls without a word, and Bruce's heart shone out of his eyes as he caught a glimpse of the moisture dimming Rob's laughing ones, and saw the sweet, motherly pity on her merry lips.
The children could not be won to talk; they lay looking gravely out on the green and blossoming world into which they were being introduced, but no expression of any sort of feeling escaped them.
"Hester, Hester, I beg your pardon that I ever thought you exaggerated," said Rob as they neared Green Pastures. "I am thankful that I helped you a little, and at last I understand that you were not too earnest."
"You are a splendid girl, Hester Baldwin," said Oswyth emphatically.
"I don't feel like a girl, Wythie. I am a happy young woman; I have found something to do in the world, and I have found my place. There isn't a dissatisfied corner in me now, and when I first knew you I was all cravings and emptiness."
Hester's earnest eyes, alight with joy, confirmed her words, and the nobility of her face far transcended mere beauty. In their hearts her three friends believed that Hester knew herself, and that she was to be one of those devoted women who find their life in losing it, and their happiness in turning aside from all personal happiness to minister to distress.
The wan children ate their light supper with gratifying appetites, and keen appreciation of Mrs. Flinders' buttermilk cookies and the fresh strawberries. Then they were handed over to the care of their nurse, and the friends to whom they owed their new home drank tea in the westerly room, flooded now with the long rays of the sinking sun.
Rob took her cup into the window and stood looking out on the peaceful Green Pastures into which these waifs had been gathered. Something stirred within her, the appeal of suffering childhood to a woman, however young that woman may be.
Mr. Baldwin came quietly up behind her. "Dear Rob," he said, "I am so proud of my girl, so happy to see how deep and fine is her nature that I want to tell you that I realize what your friendship has done for her, and that it was a fortunate day for Hester that brought to my office a brave, frightened little heroine in her black garments, and carrying her bumping suitcase."
Rob's lips quivered; she felt overwrought. "I have done nothing, Mr. Baldwin; it was all in Hester herself."
"All in her, but how much you have helped to bring it out, merely by being yourself, a high-minded, simple, wholesome, brave girl, you don't know. It's atmosphere and character that count, Robin, Bobs Bahadur, and we none of us realize how we mould others for good or ill when we breathe the air they breathe," said her fatherly friend. "Here comes Bruce after you; I must give place."
Bruce came up as Mr. Baldwin slipped away, and Rob turned back to the contemplation of the sunset.
"Say, Rob," Bruce began boyishly. "You know you call this house the separate ell of the little grey house, I shall soon be graduated and reading under Dr. Fairbairn, and I mean to devote myself to this branch of practice, as you know. I feel as though the opening of Green Pastures meant the opening of my way before me. Don't you think, Rob dear, you might tell me that you're going to help me, that you'll be—be—why, be Rob," Bruce broke off with sudden helplessness and shyness.
It was a new thing to find Bruce stammering, and appealing to her, and Rob had been deeply moved by the clinging hands of the suffering little creatures whom they had brought home. She lost all control of herself.
"I don't see what makes you follow me here, into this window, to ask for help, Bruce Rutherford!" she cried. "Of course I can't help you; of course I don't even know what you mean!" added poor Rob, usually so scrupulously truthful.
"I wanted to keep the birthday of this house in which I mean to work by getting a word from you," said Bruce aghast in his turn at Rob's change of demeanor.
"Well, of course; what word?" cried Rob. "I have given you lots of words."
"Why, Rob!" began poor Bruce reproachfully.
And just then Frances came up with her face aglow, and her eyes shining through unshed tears.
"Bruce, Rob!" she murmured. "Lester took me out in the garden and—He said he wanted to celebrate Hester's triumph by getting her a new cousin—He meant me, Rob!"
"Yes, he's been meaning you for some time," said Rob grimly. "What did you say?"
"What could I say?" said Frances simply, "but one thing?"
"Oh, just listen to that!" growled Bruce, and walked away.
Frances looked from his retreating back to Rob's perturbed face. "Rob!" she cried, "what have you done?"
"Nothing, nothing in this wide world!" cried Rob hysterically. "I should like to know why I should do anything? I hope you will be very happy, Frances, and I'm sure you will, because Lester Baldwin is a nice fellow, and if you don't mind marrying him, why you're sure to be happy."
And Rob walked off in the opposite direction from the one Bruce had taken, leaving Frances to accept this dubious congratulation from her oldest friend, and to comfort herself with the reflection which she had often heard her grandmother make, that "heaven was full of days," and that Bruce and Rob would see another dawn.