Whitney_Hitherto.txt topic ['13', '324', '378', '393']
CHAPTER I.
WHAT ANSTISS DOLBEARE REMEMBERS.
PROSE.
" TO-DAY" is a strange word. The point a life has got to,
be3^ond which it must pierce the dark ; behind which lies its
own trail of light, born of its own movement, and showing
always behind what it has truly meant and been.
The point the world has got to ; where the blaze and the
mist, the dazzle and confusion, are about it, that come of its
greater rush, like the burst of a meteor heading across the
skies.
In the blaze and mist of this "to-day," things are seen false
and distorted. People are in too great a hurry to tell of to-
day ; they ought to wait, in some things, till it has become
yesterday. ,
I think it would be a good thing if some old woman were
to tell a story, if anybody, that is, young or old, could ever
really tell a whole one. This is a thing which it is not possi-
ble truly to do. Stories in this world tell themselves by
halves. There is always a silent side ; many silent sides, per-
haps ; for lives run on together, overlap and interlace, and
none can tell the life of another. That is one thing we find
out as our to-days turn into yesterdays. Finding it out, we
grow wiser concerning ourselves.
Therefore, and for other reasons, I believe it would be good
3
4 HITHERTO :
for some old woman, in such fashion as she could* to tell a
story ; and that it is time it were done. Women, and men
too, are so apt to cry out when the first stress of their life is
upon them ; to give their raw pain and passion utterance.
The world is full of such outpourings.
What can a girl of twenty know, that she should try to say
what disappointment and endurance are, and what they come
to ; that she should scribble of the deep, inner things, the
soul-instincts and affinities, and the God-leadings, and the
ends ? Let her put her hand in His, and be led, for years and
years ; and then let her, if she can and dare, look back upon
those yesterdays and speak. I think the world would hear a
riper and a different story. I think it would truly get a novel
then.
I could not write a romance if I would. All my life long
I have been living prose ; like the bourgeois gentilhomme, not
knowing either what a grand thing that was.
I meant poetry. I longed and yearned for it. I tried to
shape and measure the weary lines ; I could never make them
stately, or pure musical. They were full of ands and buts,
and long, dry sentences of common words.
I learned at last to read them patiently, and so God's mean-
ing came, which glorified them.
If there were any glimpse of poetry in my early childhood,
it all lay between the back door-step and the head of the Long
Lane.
I used to get out there when the dishes were wiped up, or
the seam was sewn ; perhaps in the still of a starlit evening
when nobody knew where I was. I felt then, in the magnify-
ing gloom, as if I had got away into the wide world. The
world? Among the worlds.
I used to wish they would just let me be little in peace. It
was always, " You are too big a girl, Anstiss, for that ; "
" You are too old not to know how to do this." It began before
I was seven ; I used to think I must have been born too big
and too old.
By " they" I mean, especially, Aunt Ildy. We always do,
I think, instinctively individualize, somehow, that third person
plural.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 5
I never knew the whole of Aunt Ildy's name. I believe she
was secretly ashamed of it herself. If she had not been, she
would never have allowed herself to be called as she was, for
she despised nicknames. She scrupulously gave me the hard
whole of mine. It would have put a different complexion upon
days and weeks, if once in a while in them, perhaps on a
holiday afternoon, she would have said " Annie." When I
was very bad, she called me " Anstiss DoZ-beare ! " I have
wondered whether hers might have been Ildegonde, or Hilde-
garde ; or if people, indeed, ever got stories from the German
as long ago as she was born. Her other name was appropri-
ate enough. " Miss Chism " snapped you up in the very
speaking. Somehow, you could not waste words with a
woman of that name. She would not have let you, be assured.
She never let anybody waste anything ; time, or bread-crumbs,
or feelings. I learned that young enough.
I remember a morning when I sat down on the back door-
step with a damp dish-towel across my lap which I was to have
spread upon a gooseberry bush. I sat listening to the grass-
hoppers close by, for it was still in the lane, and now and
then to a far-off sound of music, or of guns. Listening also,
as I always was, mechanically and with a dread, for the sharp
call that was sure to come after me.
" Anstiss ! "
"O aunt!" I cried, remonstrating for once; "it's the
Fourth of July ! "
" Well, the world's got to keep turning round, if 'tis ; or
else it'll never be the fifth ! "
That was all it seemed to amount to with her. That dishes
should be washed after the beds were made ; that dinner
should be got after the house was swept ; that the ironing
should be done after the washing, and the mending after the
ironing ; that the fifth of July should come after the fourth ;
that things should just keep turning, whether anything turned
out or not. I used to wish there would be a fire or an earth-
quake ; anything that would joggle Aunt Ildy, and so shake
up the dreary order of affairs that they might perchance settle
back into relations a little different. I should have liked to
6 JIITIJERTO :
hear " puss in the corner!" cried somehow into my life, and
to have seen what would have come of that.
What really was unusual in my lot, what would have been
at least pathetic with any other, seemed to me the most pro-
saic and commonplace of all. I was an orphan, and so I lived
with Uncle Royle, and Aunt Ildy "took charge" of me. To
have had a father and a mother and a home, that would have
been the really poetical thing.
The Edgells lived over the Avay ; across the lane, that is,
the garden gates being opposite. Their house fronted on Mid-
dle Street, as ours on River Street. Main Street cut straight
across both at the end of the lane, running up the hill from
the waterside to the Old Meeting-house. Main Street and
River Street had sidewalks and shops ; Middle Street was
shady and quiet, with nice dwellings and white-fenced front
yards, and brown gravelled footways under the trees. Uncle
Royle might have had a house on Middle Street if lie had
chosen, or even at South Side, across the river, where a few fine
country seats had made the beginning of an aristocratic neigh-
borhood ; for he was well-to-do ; but he chose to " keep his
store," and be still better-to-do ; also he had been for 3'ears
the New Oxford postmaster ; so we lived on above and behind
the shop, where Aunt Ildy and he had been brought up. Un-
cle Royle had been married, and his wife had died early.
Perhaps "Miss Chism" (her name sounded so like scissors
with its snnpping dentals, and she seemed so constitutionally
given to cutting short whatever was most comfortably going
on about her, that from the time I first got hold of an old
mythological chart and peopled my hungry fancy from it, I
nlwaj's associated her with Atropos) may partly have ac-
counted to my mind for that.
I, too, was born here ; for my mother came home, a widow,
to have me, and to leave me, as soon as I was " too big a
girl " to cry of nights, or to touch what I was told to let alone.
So it began with prose for me, inevitably ; here in the most
everyday part of an everyday inland town, neither country
nor city, among people neither big nor little.
I was thinking of the Edgells. Why could not things have
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 7
been with me as with them ? They had each other, beside all
the rest, and that was a romance in itself. I had nothing and
no one.
Margaret was pretty. When we played " Pretty Margaret,"
at school, she was always the one to be first " shut up in her
tower ; " that used to seem so grand and beautiful to me !
And Julia, what was it in her that so fascinated me? I
could not give it a name then ; I think now it was a certain
freshness, spring, and aplomb in her whole nature that made
everything charming which she did, whether it were jumping
the rope, reciting a lesson, climbing a tree, singing a song, or
even ciphering upon a slate.
I used to play with these girls in recess, and walk home
with them after school. I used to " make-believe" that I was
their third sister, and that I only had an errand in at " Miss
Chism's" when we parted at our garden gates. I had to
" pretend very hard " about many things.
Everthing seemed to fall in easily for the Edgells ; for me,
everything took a good deal of helping out. In the first
place, they had green morocco shoes. I thought I could
have been good and pretty in green morocco shoes ; but mine
were always of common black calfskin. "When they wore out
and I begged for green ones, it was never worth while, or un-
cle wasn't going to the city, and my toes were out, and I
couldn't wait. " One of these days," he said. Aunt Ildy
" poh"-ed, and told me not to take notions.
Years before, when India-rubber shoes first came in use, I
remember they had such nice ones, so prettily stamped on the
toes, and run so evenly at the heels, and turning down so neatly
and comfortably for the foot to slip in ! Uncle bought me u.
pair when I asked him ; but they were unfinished, plain, un-
equal things, with a thick and a thin side ; if I tried to turn
them they twisted upside-down. Nobody can guess the pain
and the unsatisfaction and the disappointment I suffered over
those India-rubber shoes. Why must things be always rough
and awkward for me?
Then somebody gave the Edgells pretty basket-satchels. It
was a pleasure to put one's books and luncheon in them.
g HITHERTO :
Aunt Ilcly said it was all nonsense ; children didn't have so
many things in her day ; and I carried my calico one, in which
the books and biscuits all tumbled down together into the low-
est corner. I suppose, in her day, if she had only thought of
it, the calico satchel was the last new thing. Silly trifles these
were, of course, such as only a child could fret about ; but the
beauty of life is something to a child also. It was in these
things, then, that I longed for poetry and lived prose.
The Eclgells used to sit at their chamber window ; this was
cut low, with a broad sill, on a level with their laps ; and here
they dressed their dolls. I had no chamber of my own, to be-
gin with. I slept with Aunt Ildy ; for " where was the use of
making up so many beds?" And our window-sills were up to
my shoulders when I sat down, and only wide enough for a
spool of cotton to stand on. J[ used to pull out a green trunk
from under the bureau, and perch my chair on that and climb
up, since I could not bring the window down ; and I would
put my doll in the corner, and fold the shutter against her to
hold her up, and sew my seam or hem my towel, and make
believe it was a gown for her. Yes, the Eclgells had everything
real and easy. I had to pretend hard, and make things do.
Once, as if all were not enough, these girls had a cousin
come to stay with them. I knew nothing of cousins, except
in story-books. I had run off up the lane when the tea-things
were put away, and met them at the head. I think Aunt lldy
winked in a grim wa}^ at this escape of mine in " blind-man's
holiday " time, when she would not, by any means, have openly
allowed it. This never occurred to me, however, when I might
have taken my comfort in it. I was in my dark calico that I
had worn all the week. One gown and two aprons, these were
my seven days' allowance ; a change, and one for best ; if I
spilled or tore, I went to bed. The Edgells had on light French
prints, those pretty, old-fashioned, white-grounded ones, with
little sprays and dots and flowers running all over them, that
somehow gave one a pleasant, delicate taste in the mouth, or
a sense of fragrance, to see ; and they had their hair freshly
brushed and fastened back with round springs bound with
black velvet.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 9
"You take one corner, Jue," said Margaret, " and I'll take
the other, and we'll watch which way the stage will come."
Jue ran up to Middle and Main, and Margaret down to Main
and River. For me, I stood at the lane-head, pretending it
was some of my business also, and that I was watching where
no coach ever came. It was still and pleasant in the twilight,
and there was nothing strange in our being out there so, bare-
headed. jPdople used to do differently then from now ; and
ours was not a bustling town. We were all neighbors.
The Copes, from South Side, went by in their open carriage.
They nodded pleasantly to Julia and Margaret, and Allie
Cope smiled at me. There had been a dancing-school at the
hall the last winter, and Allie Cope used to dance with me
sometimes. I had a drab-colored silk dress it had been Aunt
Ildy's once with swan's down round the neck and sleeves,
which I wore then. It made me look dull and sallow, for there
was no contrast. It was nearly the shade of my hair. My
eyes were dark blue, and had dark lashes, notwithstanding my
pule locks ; but for these I should have been an ugly child ; as it
was, I believed myself to be so, which answered every purpose.
I never thought of its being partly the drab dress ; if I had, it
would have made no difference ; becomingness did not enter
into Aunt Ildy's articles of faith concerning dress. If a thing
was good and tidy, it had to be becoming ; handsome was that
handsome did. Calicoes that were well covered, and would
wash ; silk that would wear and turn ; above all, things that
were " in the house ; " these were not to be superseded or
disputed.
Margaret and Julia did not watch stead ily at their corners ;
they skipped up and down the sidewalk, back and forth to
me ; and by and by the stage came rumbling across Main
Street, when we were none of us looking for it. Then we all
ran down the lane, the shorter way, for it was no use running
after. The Edgells flew in at their garden-gate, and it slammed
back in my face. I lingered awhile in the faint hope that they
and the cousin might come out ; but I heard the tinkle of
china through the open window of the dining-parlor, and I
knew they were giving her her lea ; so I remembered that I
10 HITHERTO:
had an errand in at Miss Chism's. In fact, Lucretia called
out to me from the kitchen door :
" Y'raunt's looking for ye, Anstiss ! Be spry ! "
I do not know which rasped roughest on my nerves, Aunt
Ildy's direct and summary orders, or Lucretia's citation of
" Y'raunt : "
Lucretia was a good soul too. Indeed, I ought not to let
this early life of mine, now that I have learned better of its
meanings and of what came after, return upon my thought
with only hard and sordid seeming, through calling up the
worst of it. It was not hard and sordid. It was only plain
and very dull for me, since I was a child full of all keen possi-
bilities for doing and enjoying, and for missing too.
We were quiet, staid, respectable people ; the Chisms had
always been that in New Oxford, and we lived in a comfort-
able, old-fashioned, industrious way. Royle Chism it had
been Royal Chisholm once, three or four generations ago,
and we were of good stock in the old land was looked up to
by his townspeople, and had responsibilities laid upon him.
He had been sent year after year to the General Court ; he had
been postmaster through ups and downs of party ; his busi-
ness of bookseller brought him into relation with all ; the best
people, and kept him au fait to the thought and progress of
the day. Over his counter, all questions, political, religious
and local, were discussed ; it was this life, more than the
money gain of it, that kept him to his trade.
As to social position, that thing of interminable and inex-
tricable shades in New England, we came in close after the
professionals. We could claim civility, at least, from all ; our
modest living was as good and as dignified as most ; every-
body did not then drive their barouches, and wear their jewels,
and set out their plate, and visit fifteen miles about ; there
was s.till an old-school order to which such as we made no pre-
tence, and against which we had no soreness. There were
Limes and places when South Side and the town came together
with a mutual courtesy ; in the intervals, each had its own
fashions and its own proper and distinctive considerations.
Solomon Edgell, our neighbor, was the leading lawyer of
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 11
the place. Pie had gone as senator from our district to the
General Court, when Uncle Royle was a representative. They
were good friends. I played at school and in the lane, as I
have said, with his daughters. On rare and radiant after-
noons I drank tea with them, and sat in the low window-seat
and looked across in a sort of temporary triumph at an imag-
inary double of myself behind Aunt Ildy's shutter. The
Edgells, in their turn, were sent for sometimes to South Side,
and drank tea with the Copes.
Outside the town, all up and down the river, lay the beau-
tiful farming region. Wagons drove into the streets and
down to the water edge, twice and thrice a week, bringing
country produce to the freight-boats that plied back and forth
along this artery that took up and distributed the nourish-
ment of a great countiy-side, of which a growing city, twenty-
five miles away, was like the pulsing heart.
Every Saturday the wagon from Hathaway Farm came, and
stopped on its way at our door. There was the weekly paper
and perhaps a letter at the office, these were to be inquired
for ; and there was our butter, which we always had of Mrs.
Hathaway, and very likely some fruit or other kindly sending,
at least a message to Aunt Ilcly. Mrs. Hathaway and she
were old schoolmates and friends, in a one-sided sort of way,
like sunshine and cliff. Kindly Mrs. Hathaway was content
to do the shining ; upon my aunt's side there was grim con-
stancy and reflective capability. It always seems as if such
persons did more in taking than the readier souls in giving.
Possibly, measuring by strain of nature, it is counted so.
Certainly, my aunt would accept kind offices from few.
It is plain I could not write that novel if I would. I have
gone wandering into all these things from just remembering
how Lucretia called me in that night out of the lane.
I saw the cousin afterward, many times. She came into
my life as an influence. I know now what it was ; she was
picturesque. What I had seen a little of in Julia Edgell, I
saw with tenfold largeness and lustre in her. Everything she
wore had an effect ; everything she did was in relief against
the common background of others' unnoticed doings ; things
12 HITHERTO:
happened to her as nobody else need expect they should hap-
pen to them. She always made me feel as if she were living
in a story. If I had had any dramatic knowledge then, I should
have said to myself that she was always upon the stage.
She was in mourning, to begin with ; that, to my quick im-
agination, set her apart in a sanctity and dignity at once ; if
she smiled or spoke, it was as if out of some holy gloom she
had condescended. The crape and the bombazine were a real
majesty of sorrow, a cloud into which no common experience
could withdraw. The black merino shawl she loved to wear,
contrasting about her white neck and beneath her rounded
and imprinted chin, and falling in soft lines over her figure ;
the long veil that made her face so fair and sweet, these
were, to my child's fancy, the very poetry of bereavement ;
there seemed such a grandeur and solemn distinction in hav-
ing lost a friend. She so young too. When old women wore
black shawls and bonnets, there seemed nothing in that ;
plenty such came into meeting ; there was probably nothing
else left, and it was not worth while that they should buy
anything new. The first Sunday after Augusta Hare came,
my open-worked straw-bonnet, with the blue gauze ribbon (I
hated gauze, it curled up so at the ends ; it couldn't float,
even if there had ever been enough of it) , seemed so tawdry
and unmeaning, so little-girlish, when I put it on! I
had a secret wish in my heart that I was grown up, not
very old, and that I had somebody belonging to me for
whom it would be time to die. I thought of no one in partic-
ular. I do not think there was any wickedness in my wish.
I thought only of the sublimity of death ; of the greatness of
having had it come near one.
It was Augusta Hare's father who had died ; the pity of it
I could not comprehend, only the poetic pathos, never having
known what daughterhcod truly was. I supposed it had been
quite time, and it seemed to me no ill for him, but a crowning ;
he became kingly to my thought, and a question about him
trembled for weeks within me, and passed with a thrill from
my lips at last, when she herself said something which drew
it forth. All things came to me in this wise, with a depth
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 13
and a passion, according to their kind. Only my own life
seemed so poor, a mere living on, with no quick stirrings.
It Avas bad for me ; I should make all kinds of false estimates
and mistakes ; what I ought to have had was the beauty of
childhood ; the harm was in my being " too big a girl.".
It was Augusta's father ; and she had money of her own
which he had left her ; this made her so important and so
talked about ; houses and stores belonged to her, away in
H , where Mr. Edgell, being her guardian, had to go and
transact business for her. She was to stay a little while here,
and then go away to a boarding-school : another of the grand
possibilities, which would never, I supposed, be possible to
me.
Besides all this, she told Margaret and Julia, in the deepest
confidence, that she was engaged. As soon as she had done
school she would be married. If I had venerated her before,
there is no verb to express what I did then. Grown-up peo-
ple, particularly men who make the dictionaries, have no
need, perhaps no recollection of a need, for such an utterance.
Whether in the truest things or the most fantastic, there is
nothing like the intensity of a child. Straight to the vital
essence its imagination and its insight go ; stopped by no
contradictions, no practicalities.
I am remembering a foolishness ; but I believed in some-
thing grand. I cannot help being reminded, even by a fool-
ishness, of what the Master said concerning this seizing of
greatness and glory, and how far might be its reach. " They
only do always behold the very face," even of " your Father
which is in heaven."
In the midst of all this, I left off hemming towels, and with
weariness and tears was learning to darn stockings.
I had two comforts over this work, grinding and distaste-
ful ; one was to get down with it sometimes into Lucretia's
room, in those clean, restful hours between the eating of
dinner and the getting of tea ; when the cat, and the tea-
kettle, and the few flies that escaped Aunt Ildy's and
Lucretia's vigilance and resisted their traps, 'had the kitchen
to themselves, and Aunt Ildy had stepped out, or was taking
14 HITHERTO:
a nap, or gone to a sewing circle, or preparatory meeting,
and Lucretia would let me in, and, perhaps, tell me a story.
Her room was off the kitchen, and down, by two steps ;
these, clean and glossy with old-fashioned thick, dark yellow
paint and almost daily soapsuds ; from a little child I re-
member them, worn into hollows along the edges and knobby
around the nail-heads. Sometimes I had used to " keep
store " there, kneeling on the floor and setting out my goods
upon them ; selling things to Lucretia as she came to want
them in her work ; pepper-box, and salt-cellar, and nutmeg-
grater, knife, spoon, and dipper. This was when she was not
hurried, of course, and when she happened to be very good-
natured ; and she used to pay me with spotted beans. After-
ward these were my counters in " Hull Gull ; " I doing all the
handling and counting, shutting my eyes and picking up hap-
hazard, when it was my turn to guess how man} 7 , and keeping
conscientiously the two piles, Lucretia's and my own, of
which hers went when the game was over into the bean-box
again, and mineinto a little bag to " make change " in my
next shop-keeping.
An old-fashioned chest of drawers, ver} r much perfumed
with musk and apples ; a bedstead, glorious with a patchwork
quilt in a sort of Hail-Columbia star pattern on a dark-blue
ground, of which every bit was the text of some reminiscent
narrative ; a great oval, braided woollen mat which carpeted the
middle of the painted floor ; and a low, broad window, opening
into the back garden, with morning-glories and scarlet beans
growing to its top in summer, close by whose pleasantness
stood a black and yellow wooden rocking-chair, with cushions
upon the seat and across the head-piece covered with remark-
able figured patch, upon which a summer-house and a red-
tailed rooster, the one as big as the other, alternated, these
made up the external furnishings and charms of Lucretia's
room. About these clung the perception of a kind of life pe-
culiar to itself; not the high and picturesque, of which I had
vague dreams and glimpses elsewhere and in other moods, but
the plain and cosey, contented, commonplace and comfortable.
Among them were suggestions of " away down East," where
A STOIiY OF YESTERDAYS. 15
this life had begun, almost in the very Avilds ; of up-country
frolics, huskings and quillings, sleighs-rides and singing-schools ;
of camp-meetings and " hirings out," when Lucretia, like other
girls of her circle, had entered for a winter or a summer into
some neighbor household, making one with it, and "helping
round ; " learning its life and plans and interests from an inte-
rior view ; being behind the scenes at a " weddin'," or a fu-
neral perhaps ; knowing all about how the match and the cake
were made, or the " particklers " of the illness and the final
frame of mind, all this I heard in scraps from Lucretia, and
idealized, in one way, as I did Helen Mar's adventures, or the
contemporary life of the Edgells, in another. It was not all
misfortune, my being imaginative ; I got a great deal out of it.
My other comfort was in an accomplishment I had acquired
with infinite pains, and could only exercise by stealth ; that
of reading and darning at the same time, seizing two or three
lines while I drew out my long thread, digesting and enjoying
them while I inned and outed the next woof-line with my
needle. In this fashion I embroidered banners, in fancy, with
Helen in her Scottish castle. I trembled at her perils in the
hands of Soulis or De Valence ; I knelt in the chapel beside
Sir William Wallace, and I watched the triumphal entry into
Sterling from the walls of Snawdoun. I had this, and the six
volumes of Santo Sebastiano, and the seven of Sir Charles
Grandison. Mrs. Hathaway lent me these last, one at a time.
After all, I was not thoroughly unhappy. One might live
through deeper basketfuls of darns than mine in company like
theirs.
Aunt Ildy and Lucretia were immersed, one day, in the
anxieties of preserving ; all the afternooa they were busy
pasting papers over jars and tumblers, and setting in final
array their ruby and amber pride on the long shelves of the
great store-room. I was safe upstairs with my books and my
long needle and my mending cotton ; it was only to work an
hour more, at most, and I did not care for the lane to-day.
Lady Sclina had just torn her dress in the library door at
which she had been listening, and Lord Delainore was recom-
mending her to have it " fine-drawn ; " that was a pretty word
16 HITHERTO :
for tedious doings. I called my darnings to myself by that
new name, and went on pricking up the balls of my fingers
contentedly ; as eager meanwhile as if I had not read it a dozen
times before, to see how all should come out straight, the fine-
drawing of deceit be demolished, and Julia's integrity tri-
umphantly made manifest.
All at once, from the garden door, a light step came up the
stairs and around to my room. I had been too absorbed to
notice from the window that any one had entered.
How lovely she was, as I turned and saw her then, in her
clear, black muslin with tiniest dashes of white, and a knot
of black ribbon in her hair ! - In her hand, streaming down in
brilliant contrast over her dress, was a rich, broad bonnet-
scarf of blue, fringed at the ends, as I had seen the Edgells'
last Sunda}'. Theirs were violet, and green ; the gifts, and
the suggestion of the new style, had been from Cousin Augusta.
It was a simple, graceful fashion that had just come up, infi-
nitely taking to my fanciful eye, of replacing all the perks and
pinks and bows of flimsy gauze, and the tawdry flowers, such
as had been worn, with a single band of wide lutestring passed
up from under the chin across the bonnet in the depression
between front and crown, and tied at one side in a careless
knot or loop, with long ends fluttering down upon the shoul-
der. Next to a veil, it was the loveliest head-gear I had ever
seen.
" I have brought this over for j r ou, dear," said Cousin
Augusta ; and then the sky fell down.
Something seemed to make the beautiful thing she held out
to me oscillate before my vision from side to side, like the
leaping reflection of light from a moving mirror. I fairly put
my hands up to rub my eyes.
" Get your bonnet, Nansie ; let's try it on."
She took it for granted I should dare. She took upon her-
self, perhaps purposely, the responsibility of act and instiga-
tion. Otherwise, how should I have laid a sacrilegious finger
on that Sunday finery of mine, which, once put together under
Aunt Ildy's order and supervision, became that inviolable
thing the " new " and "best;" which should continue such
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 17
through whatever gradual fading, and crushing, and fraying,
till the same august authority should ordain a substitution.
Nothing but bits of curled and shabby ribbons, defaced, un-
meaning flowers, and scraps of flabby lace they were which
Augusta Hare removed so unconcernedly, and laid into a little
worthless heap ; but I trembled at every stitch she snipped,
and every pin she drew, as if she were laying violent hands
on the pillars of some sublime institution. I caught my breath,
while she chatted easily and pleasantly.
What, made her take this notice of me, and show me this
kindness ? She knew how I worshipped her ; and she liked to
be worshipped. She knew I had been drawn, atom as I was,
into her irresistible sphere, and had become a little satellite.
The tremendous force of gravitation is a mutual thing ; the
great sun himself cannot but lean a little, in his turn, towards
the smallest orb that wheels about him. Otherwise, there was
nothing in me that could have won a thought of hers, far less
her love.
The open straw was lined with white ; she put some of the
freshest of the little blue flowers, picked out and arranged as
only her fingers could do it, about the face, and then she set it
on my head, bending it deftly, tied it by the little inside
strings, and passed the rustling elegance about it, knotting it
at the side with one upstanding loop, and drawing the full
ends out handsomely, all of which made a great rushing sound
about my ears while her hands were busy at it, and sent a
quiver all over me of mingled ecstasy and apprehension.
What would Aunt Ildy say ? But, oh! was it not beautiful
when she led me to the glass to look ?
" Now do it yourself, and let me see. Not too long a bow ;
there, just that ; the shortest end forward and uppermost,
so ; it's just as pretty as it can be, and it covers all the pin-
places. Why, the bonnet looks quite new ! "
Oh, dear me, if Aunt Ilcly had heard that ! When it was
my " new" bonnet bought and trimmed three months ago !
I don't suppose it entered Augusta Hare's head that she had
done an impertinent thing, she was so used to choosing and
changing for herself, and the Edgells thought nothing of tak-
2
18 HITHERTO .'
inr the like little fancies and liberties with their dress. It
o
was only I who dared not say that my bonnet was my own.
I dared not even confess to Augusta Hare that it was not. I
could only kiss her and thank her for her gift, and stammer-
ingly "hope that. Aunt Ildy " "Oh! Miss Chisrn will be
sure to like it," she interrupted, where I could not have fin-
ished. " It's all the fashion, and plain too ; nothing dashy
about it ; just the thing to wear with your white, ruffled, dimity
coat."
And, kissing me again, she went downstairs.
I put all the scraps, which were fit only to have gone straight
to the rag-bag, reverently into the bottom of the bandbox,
and shut the bonnet in with them, the bright scarf tied across
it as it should be" worn ; for I liked to leave it so, and there
was the vague thought of Aunt Ildy, who must come to see it
sooner or later, and to whom otherwise it would have simply
seemed a denuded and annihilated thing, since she could never
have taken in the unexpressed idea ; and I went back to my
darning rich, and glad, and frightened to death.
I suppose if I had been six or eight years older, and had
gone and got privately married, I could not have come back
into Miss Chism's presence with a more awful consciousness
upon me than I bore that night. I cowered guiltily within,
myself when Uncle Royle spoke kindly to me, and felt a con-
demned traitor as Aunt Ildy helped me to butter. Confession
was struggling to my lips ; I longed to ease my mind ; but I
waited, turning over phrases that should not quite choke me ;
nay, that should seem innocently fearless, taking it for granted
that the thing should be approved.
" O aunty ! " I began, desperately, once, as she had her
head in the cupboard, putting by the cake, " Miss Augusta
Hai-e has given "
" The cheese, Anstiss," said Aunt Ildy, with neither inter-
est nor attention diverted by my words from what she was
about. " And the quince. Quick ! "
I handed her from the tea-table what she called for, and she
closed and buttoned the cupboard ; closed and buttoned my
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 19
lips also ; for how could that sudden remembrance occur to
me in like manner again ?
She kept me busy with the dishes, and running to and fro ;
then she got out the cribbage-board, and she and Uncle Royle
began their unfailing game. I had some knitting and worked
tremulously at that.
Once more, a little later, as they gathered up their tricks
after a hand, I did essay :
" O aunty ! I was going to tell you "
" Fifteen two, fifteen four, a pair is six ; six, seven, eight
and six, seven, eight is twelve, and his nob thirteen!"
counted Uncle Royle, and put me out again.
20 SITHERTO :
CHAPTER II.
PUNISHMENT.
I WAS putting away the last of the pink-edged cups and
plates in the high oak dresser the next morning after break-
fast, when I heard Aunt Ilcly go down the half flight of stairs
which led to the street door, and Richard Hathaway's cheery
voice greeting her below.
" I've driven mother down this morning, you see, Miss
Chism. She's got shopping to do in the town, "and well,
you'd best step out, if you'll be so good, and she'll tell you
her plans herself."
I came as far as the jog in the passage, and caught a glimpse
of Mrs. Hathaway's kindly and comely face leaning forth from
behind the canvas side of the covered wagon, where she sat
holding the reins while her son should bring in box and bas-
ket.
" Yes, Ildy," she was saying, " it's a proper pleasant day,
and there wasn't much of a load to go or come, so we took
the wagon, Richard and I ; and what I want is that when we
get along back, three o'clock, say, you an' Anstiss ? ll have
your things on to go out with us to the farm and spend Sun-
day. Lucreshy'll take care of Royle for once, I guess, I
don't suppose there's any use of asking him, and the rowen's
bein' cut, and the fields are as sweet as June. It'll do you
good ; especially the child."
I wished she had not said that last word ; not that Aunt
Ildy really would grudge me a good ; but she would feel I had
no business to be put first, or " specially."
"Oh, I don't exactly know how," she began, in reply.
" Saturday's a poor day to drop things just where they are.
I aint ever much given to jaunting, you know. I guess you'd
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 21
better come back here and take an early tea, and ride home
in the edge of ^the evening. We'll come out some other time,
a week-day, maybe."
" No such a thing, Ildy Chism. Some other time isn't any
time at all. It won't be you if your house isn't Sunday-straight
by two o'clock, and I shall just carry out my own calculation,
or not come back here at all, unless, indeed, you'll let An-
stiss go without you."
" That wouldn't do. There'd be nothing of her to come
back a-Monday. She'd leave a piece on every bush on the
farm. If you're so set, well, I'll see about it."
This was New-English for full consent ; for thanks and all,
with Aunt Ildy. So I knew we should go ; and I had great
ado to hold myself quiet, and wait for proper notice of her
intention from Aunt Ildy herself, after she should have " seen
about it." I did not think, though, she need have made me
out quite such a romp. I was ashamed to have Richard Hath-
away stand there and hear her speak so of me.
He came in just then, with the nice, fresh-smelling box of
new-made butter, and the basket of hardly less fragrant eggs,
warm and spotless right out of the hay. He always brought
them -in himself, though Lucretia often met him at the door,
and would have taken them. He always had a pleasant word
for me too, though Richard Hathaway was never given to
much talking.
" Are you glad, Nansie?" He saw by my face, I am sure,
that I had heard.
" I shall be when it's time," I answered, demurely. I had
never heard of such things then, but I knew practically well
enough the difference between informal information and offi-
cial announcements. In Aunt Ildy's regime nothing was,
until she declared it to be.
Richard looked in my eyes and laughed. I knew why ; I
felt them dancing in my head ; and there had been a tilt in my
voice that 'I tried to make so calm.
" The old Cropple-crown has got fourteen chickens."
There was no use in trying then ; I laughed out, all my
delight bubbling over together with this last drop. Aunt
22 HITHERTO:
Ildy came in and found me so. She thought Richard had
told me. She said nothing till Richard had gone, and then
only sharply :
" You needn't be too sure. I haven't decided yet. It will
depend."
I understood that. Oh, if I only could please her all the
morning and seem not to be too happy about anything par-
ticular ! I tried to move round as usual, and not to dance or
sing. I did not ask her a single question, but waited pa-
tiently. I bit my lips when ecstatic thoughts came suddenly,
and checked myself on the very verge of glad " ifs."
For three hours I truly believe I never once remembered
my bonnet. When I did think of it, there was no chance for
anything like casual mention. I should have had to follow
her pertinaciously into a closet, or waylay her in full career,
and- make it a regular confession. I did not see why I need
put myself at that disadvantage.
Aunt Ildy ! with everybody else I was a frank child ;
witfi yourself, you tempted me to be old and wary. This was
the greatest harm j'ou did me.
1 was to wear my gingham cape-bonnet to ride over and
run about the farm in, of course ; Aunt Ildy would never
"hear to" my "flacketting round " in my best things on any
but best occasions. My little bandbox held, as well as my
bonnet, my white dimity coat pinned up in a large old towel.
Aunt lid}' gave it to me to put in, and left the box itself in
my charge, telling me not to carry it upside down. My heart
fluttered up and back again between its proper place and my
throat, as she did so. I stood beside the bed with my back
turned to her, and when the choke went down a little began
again :
" Aunt Ildy ! Just see " but here I heard her voice sud-
denly calling to Lucretia from the farther stair-head. She
was eveiywhere at once this busy day.
So dinner came, and three o'clock, and the Hathaways ;
and Richard helped Aunt Ildy in upon the back seat with his
mother, and lifted me up in front to sit with him. Aunt
Ildy's bandbox, containing her Sunday bonnet and best cap,
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 23
she, too, religiously reserved her best and wore her green
calash, was made room for under the seat, and she took her
double-covered basket in which were our night-clothes in her
lap. Richard put my little box between his feet, " so that,"
he whispered, " I might drive, by and by ; " and we were off
up the long River Street and out among the meadows.
The farm was four miles away, just on the edge of Broad-
fields ; within a mile or so of Broadfields meeting-house,
'where we should go to-morrow.
Our ride that afternoon is one of the things that come up
most vividly in my recollection of old days. Its hope and
delight and dread were so intense, by turns ; its beguiling of
beauty and present content were so full, at times, and so
forgetful of the rest.
"We used to have " rides " then ; they were a great deal bet-
ter things than " drives " are nowadays. I cannot more
than half fall in with the new-fashioned precision, and I am
inclined somewhat to dispute its being so precise after all.
It leaves some inconvenient open questions and ambiguities.
For instance, do you drive, or ride, or what then, in a stage-
coach or a horse-car? And what is the difference when one
actually holds the reins? You drive yourself, or somebody
else, do you? Very well ; \\ihat do you do with the horse?
I rode that day sitting by Richard's side, he managing the
great brown bay ; I drove when he gave it up to me for a safe,
level space, and a few watchful minutes on his part ; the
driving was dignified and exciting ; the riding was passive,
dreamy, haunted with imaginations, freshened with new
thoughts that came in, manifold, by the wa3'side.
It was early in September, and the white and purple asters
were beginning to smile and nod by the fences ; the sweet-
briers were perfecting their -scarlet ovals, and the fragrance
of ripening fruits and late hay-crops came up under the har-
vest sun. Flocks of turkeys were roaming the stubble of
early grain-fields ; there were heaps of corn, waiting for the
husking, already gathered into some of the great, open barns ;
some of the stirring housewives had got out goodly strings of
apples to dry against the clapboards ; one began, in the midst
24 HITHERTO: *
of the warmth and perfume of summer, to get a flavor of the
coming cheer and plenty and snugness of a New England
winter. It is with this meeting of ripeness and beauty, this
focal point of joy where labor and reward, growth and rest,
salute each other and their mingled breath is on the air, that
autumn recompenses for the harsh doubts and strifes, the
uncertain advance and retard, the delays and chills and dis-
appointments of that opposite pole of the year, our American
spring. Every sense brings back to me at this moment what
every sense enjoyed that day, so long ago. And I can look
back now and take the good of it, which was the life of it,
while the pain, which was a passing thing, is done with.
The pain came up when we saw Broadfields spire between
the hills. I must tell her to-night ; I ought to have told her
long before. I had, in a manner, obtained a pleasure under
false pretences, coming out here with her, bringing undeclared
iniquity in nay innocent-looking band-box before her very
eyes. I knew what she would think and say, but I began to
feel that it must be to-night, at all hazards ; it would be too
audacious to put the bonnet on to-morrow. I am sure I looked
pale and wild when Richard Hathawa}^ lifted me down over
the wheel, and gave the box into my hand.
I followed Aunt Ildy up into the best bedroom, trembling.
I remember I stood and looked at the little balls on the white
curtain fringes, moved lightly in the gentle air that came in at
the opened windows, as one looks at little senseless things
like these, when one is about to suffer a great pain or danger.
Aunt Ildy was pinning on her cap at the glass. There was
something brave and honest, after all, in my telling it then ;
for my visit had not fairly begun ; there were dreadful things
in her power, besides I had truly tried before.
"Aunt Ildy, Miss Augusta Hare made me a present, yes-
terday, of a scarf for my bonnet, and showed me how to put it
on. It is just like those she gave the Edgells, only theirs are
purple and green. Mine is blue."
I don't know how I said it all. Something came up in me with
my honest, though tardy effort, of a sustaining conscious-
ness that I had a right to put it so, as a simple matter in
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 25
which I looked for no blame, and to claim, of course, her in-
terest and appreciation for the gift. While I spoke, I opened
the bandbox and took the bonnet out. I adjusted the bow,
and smoothed the floating ends. I held it forth in a dead
silence.
I think Aunt Ildy was fairly at a loss for words. I had
never done anything like this before. Now it was a greatness
thrust upon me. It was like a Declaration of Independence.
I don't know how John Hancock and the rest felt when they
had done it. I only know my teeth would have chattered if I
had not held them forcibly apart, and that all my breath was
gone.
Her great gray eyes looked at me in a way they had, as if
the very Day of Judgment were coming down out of them.
I waited, tiying not to let the inward tremble become a visi-
ble shake, or the Day of Judgment know I saw it.
" You little artful hypocrite ! " came at last with the
most awful and bitter deliberation. "You think you have got
here, do you ? And your bonnet with you ? And that I can't
help it? Lay that thing down. Open that basket. Takeout
your night-gown. Now undress yourself and go to bed."
She said it all slowly, and in a monotone, her finger on the
unfastened side of her cap, and then turned round to the glass
again, and put in the last pin.
I laid the thing down, the beautiful thing that might have
given me so much pleasure. I opened the basket, and took out
my night-gown, a plain little garment with straight sleeves
and ungarnished neckband, made last winter of brown cotton,
and partly bleached by wearing and washing to a fitness for
summer use. And then I turned and faced Aunt Ildy in the
glass, while I reached up over my shoulders to unfasten my
frock.
" Don't say ,1 was artful, Aunt Ildy. I wanted you to know,
and I tried to tell you, but I couldn't get a chance."
" Chance!"
The contempt, the utter discredit, the putting to shame and
absurdity of such a plea, the flinging back my truth into my
26 HITHERTO :
face as a lie, all these, inflected in that one word, could nei-
ther be spelled nor punctuated.
My cheeks, my ears, tingled with anger. I heard little
electric snaps in my head, and they seemed to go out at my
eyes. If I had been six years old, instead of twelve, I should
have stamped and slapped at her. I hated her at that minute,
as only a child outraged and exasperated, can hate. I relieved
myself with a venomous impertinence.
" You take up people's words, Miss Chism. That is very
ill-mannered."
Then she came to me and shook me ; shook me and glared
at me, and at last pushed me roughly toward the bed. I let
myself fall upon it, and shut my eyes and tried to faint away. I
often tried and longed for this ; tried and longed when my blood
was boiling, and wondered that I could not bring it to pass.
Aunt Ildy looked at me as one who had done her duty, and
who left me to my tantrums and my conscience. I believe she
truly felt that she did her duty by me, and that it was she
upon whom it fell hard. She kept on doing it. I will do her
the justice to say she never flinched. Whatever praise belongs
to her for that, let me award it.
She left me and went downstairs. As soon as she had
gone, I put off fainting, and got up and bolted the door. I
knew I should not dare to leave it so ; but there was a tempo-
rary relief in pretending to myself that I had shut her out.
I was only a child, and not a vindictive one. Children's in-
tense passions are mercifully short-lived ; by the time I had taken
off my stockings, I had begun to cool. By the time I got my
night-gown on, I began to feel I had been in fault. That was
the sting alwaj'S ; I was never persecuted wholly for righteous-
ness' sake ; I knew I ^vas persecuted, and I could wish it might
have been for once as a pure martyr. Then I could have known
a kind of glorious joy in my resentment ; a thrill of sweet-
ness in my grief. This was a piece of my prose ; I knew, after
all, that I was only a commonplace, naughty girl, and I could
never faint away.
In my thought of myself I was true, ever unsparing.
I confessed to myself that I had not been blameless. Tears
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 27
came down my hot cheek, and I was sorry. I undrew
the bolt and crept into bed, and made up my mind that
I would say so to Aunt Ildy. I always did say so in the
end ; I said it so often, alas ! that she came not to care for it,
or believe it. " I should like to see something of it," she
would say. I meant she should see something of it ; perhaps
if she had been anybody else, she would have done so. I was
as truly penitent as I had been wicked, only these states alter-
nated so swiftly and unexpectedly with each other. " There
was no consistence in it," Aunt Ildy said.
The bed was pleasant, after all ; it was better than it would
have been to go down there. I was exhausted, and my good
time there was spoiled, at any rate. I could lie here and
watch the afternoon away in peace. I was at peace ; with a
child, to be sorry is to be at once inwardly forgiven. I only
wondered, now and then, with a little tremor of mortification,
what Richard and Mrs. Hathaway would think.
The bed stood right across a western window, and this
looked down into an orchard. I could smell ripe apples, and
hear faint clucks and chirps of feathered families picking up
meat suppers of bugs and worms. The wide sky would be all
golden and purple and red, by and by, as the sun went down ;
and the moon and the little stars would be out above the hills.
I heard the great wagons creaking up to the barn, and the hay-
sweetness was shaken out into all the air, as the men tossed it
up with their forks into the windows.
As the sun slanted round, ceasing to fall full across me, I
put out my hand and softly pushed back the green blind, and
then I could see into the tree-tops in which lived little birds ;
off where white clouds lay low along the heaven, waiting to
put on their glory ; away to green hill-sides and far-off grazing
cows and sheep.
Well, I was here, as Aunt Ildy said ; and she could not
help that. Not until Monday morning. Now and then I
thought I heard her coming, and would pull back the blind
again. I must not let her know that I could escape so into
all this beauty and delight. She must believe me to be quite
28 HITHERTO :
miserable, or her duty would not be done. Was this deceitful-
ness of nature, or only the instinct of self-defence?
The keeping-room was on the east side of the house down-
stairs. Behind it were the little tea-parlor, Mrs. Hathaway's
room, and the kitchenT I and the sunset would be quite by
ourselves. This was good.
As I lay thinking how good, something came filing in sud-
denly through my open window and fell upon my bed. Not a
bird. A great red-brown, odorous pear. Another shot fol-
lowed. This was a peach as big as my two hands could hold ;
amber-colored on one side, crimson on the other ; a little mist
of dust-colored down like a veil over the whole. I knew the
wind did not blow them in. I knew in a minute that good,
kind Richard Hathaway was there, and that he did not de-
spise, but pitied me, in my fault and my imprisonment.. I
heard a step crunching the short-cut grass-stems as he walked
away.
In a few minutes came a gentle " Biddy ! Biddy ! " with the
steps again, and a fluttering and clucking and chirping that
drew nearer and nearer. 1 sat up, pulled the blind to screen
myself, and looked through it from behind the back edge of
the curtain. I saw the old Cropple-crown, and I counted her
fourteen chickens. I saw Richard too, who had lured them
patiently down under my window, standing back under the
house wall, never once looking up, throwing meal-dough from
a tin pan among them.
" Oh, the cunning things ! " I cried, quite off my guard ; and
I saw Richard Hathaway smile, but still he never looked up.
I don't know ; but sometimes I think now, when I recollect
of him things like these, that they came somehow nearer to
poetry and chivalry, small, common things though they were,
through their kindly meaning, and the delicate, thoughtful
way in which he managed them, than I dreamed of at the time,
or for long after. Chivalry is not all in riding tilts, or storm-
ing towers, or wearing ladies' gloves ; nor even in sending bou-
quets to front doors, or singing serenades under windows, as
the young men of New Oxford had been taken with doing, in
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 29
an epidemic sort of way, ever since Augusta Hare had been
staying at the Edgells.
Aunt Ildy came up in rigid, stony, sj'stematic displeasure,
which was a part of her discipline and fulfilment of duty to-
me-ward, and brought me a plate of bread and butter, and a
glass of water, at six o'clock. She set it down upon a chair
beside the bed without a word. Even the wicked must not
starve, bodily. There is a sixth commandment against that.
But for a kind, forgiving word, a look of tender rnercy uncon-
strained, a glance that questions hopefully if better things
may yet have begun to be ; it is well that the child-spirit
should be put on diet, should long and faint, and feel pun-
ished and cast out, till it lose its appetite even, and cease to
care, and fall into a moral atrophy. Well for the world that
God knew better, and sent down his Son !
I think back and look upon my then self in a strange kind
of pity, when I remember how I repented toward this icy un-
relenting, and shed warm tears against this face of rock.
" Aunt Ildy. Please forgive me. I am sorry I spoke to
you so." Aunt Ild3 T 's hand was on the cover of the bandbox
in which she had thrust the offending bonnet out of sight.
" Oh, yes ; you're always sorry t Where's the pieces?"
"Down at the bottom. Won't you, Aunt Ildy? Mayn't
I begin again ? "
" I've no doubt you will begin again, the first chance you
get." -
She knew well enough what I meant ; yet this was all the
answer she would give me, wresting my words to a bitter
sneer ; and so she took the bonnet, gathered up the remnants
of its past identity, and walked away downstairs.
I always longed so to " begin again ; " to rub out the old
mistake and misery, to prevail on the hard eyes to shut them-
selves against the past, and to watch for and remember only
the new and better future that I meant should be. Only One
does that for us ; He who " blots out our iniquities and covers
our sins."
I used sometimes, involuntarily, to plead so, when I failed
suddenly in a lesson at school that I thought I knew. I used
30 HITHERTO :
so to entreat Lucretia, when I had been mischievous in the
kitchen, and she threatened to tarn me out and send me off
upstairs. " Oh, let me stay and begin again ! " It is the ever-
lasting beseeching out of the pain and shaine and the slow
struggle of humanity.
Did Aunt Ildy never need to cry out in like manner herself
for any failure in her life ? I do not know. It seemed to me
a peculiarity in her constitution that, having once set out and
determined to be rigidly righteous, the possibility of her ever,
by any slip, or self-delusion, or infirmity, finding herself at
fault, after all, like common unexacting mortals, never even
faintly occurred to her from that time forth ; as if, having once
woke up early in the morning, no getting behindhand after-
ward, through loss or waste of the plentiful minutes, could take
away -that primal fact, or change the value of her day.
Well, I could never begin again, except in one thing, that
was my garter knitting. If I dropped a stitch and made a
hole in that, I could j*avel out, and wind up, and cast new
stitches, and go on until my fingers made another blunder.
" That was all it amounted to," Aunt Ildy said. When she
dropped a stitch she knitted it right in again. Sometimes it
got turned and twisted in the picking up, but that did not
matter. Nobody could find a hole in her work, and she never
ravelled out.
I ate my bread and butter. I had my pear and my peach
for sauce ; and presently something more came through the
window: one at a time, two long, brown, spicy, twisted
doughnuts. Mrs. Hathaway made them in rings and balls, as
well as twists ; but Richard remembered that I liked twists
best. It was better fun than Aunt Ildy knew ; and since she
would not let me be sorry and begin again, I put that off, and
took such unsanctified comfort as I could get.
I got up early the next morning, without forbiddance. In
truth I had been restless from before dajdight. One cannot
begin at four in the afternoon and lie still much beyond the
same hour in the morning ; and Aunt Ildy wanted, no doubt,
a last nap undisturbed. So I dressed and went downstairs.
The best room door was partly open as I went by, and I
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 31
peepea in. There was an old-fashioned, round-framed, con-
vex mirror over the chimne} 7 , in which you saw yourself di-
minished and far off. This was a great wonder and delight to
me. I ventured in to take a little prance before it. But
I was stopped, aghast, at what I saw upon the table beneath
the window. My bonnet, re what shall I say? resur-
rected ; dug up again, 'as it were, very much the worse, as to
its old form and idea, for having been buried. There are two
things that not all the king's horses nor all the king's men can
ever do in this world, set Humpty Dumpty up again, or re-
combine an old garnishing of bits and ends that have faded
here, and crumpled there, and come to a certain unity of shab-
biness, into anything like unity again. The last state of that
bonuet is worse than the first. To this last state had Aunt
Ildy's remorseless, retributive fingers brought the remains of
mine. I could have cried ; but it was funny. It looked like
an old bird that had had a fight ; or like an excited porcupine
with two flabby tails. It bristled and it draggled at once. I
wondered if she would actually make me wear it. While I
stood there, Richard walked along the hall, and saw me and
came in.
" Just look ! " I said ; and then I made a little unexpected
sort of sound, a " boo-higgle," I used to call it, when I half
began to cry, and laughed in the middle of it. " I had a pres-
ent of such a beautiful ribbon, and I put it on ; and Aunt
Ildy has gone and made it back again into this."
Richard Hathaway took it up on his broad hand and turned
it round.
" Well," he said, in his quiet way, " I always thought Miss
Chism was a smart woman." That was all the notice he took
of it ; and he laid it back, the limp gauze strings trailing
down forlornly from the table. Whether that first suggested
what came after, or whether he had seen her at it the night
before, and had ample time for inspirations, I don't know ;
but he took me off to the barn, and diverted my mind with
chickens, and gray and white kittens, and Munchausen, his
little spaniel puppy. I asked him what he called him so for,
32 HITHERTO :
and he laughed, and said Jabez thought it was a good name,
" 'cause he was allers munchin' and chawin'."
I saw the cows milked ; and I milked one, to the extent of
a teaspoonful, myself; and I drank a mug full of white, warm,
foaming milk, and then dipped off pure froth and sipped it ;
and I stood on a big rock iu the middle of the barn-yard, and
watched the whole herd turned off down the green lane to find
their pasture ; and then we went in to breakfast.
Richard brought Munchausen in and fed him in the kitchen.
Aunt Ildy came down, and while Mrs. Hathaway took the
brown, sweet biscuits out of the bake-kettle, (there are no
biscuits now so sweet as those that used to come to their per-
fection so, with the fervid embers heaped below and the coals
of fire upon their heads) , we all stood round the kitchen
hearth and warmed ourselves, for it was a cool autumn morn-
ing ; and then we went into the little tea-room, which was also
breakfast-room, and night and morning condensed themselves
together into an excess of content for me. Richard went
round through the hall to turn Mun out at the front door. He
shut the breakfast-room door after him when he came in, to
keep out Mun and the wind, he said.
Mun, or the wind, or both, got in somewhere else, while we
were at breakfast, where a* door had not been shut.
When we came out to get the sunshine in the broad porch,
there was a great battle still going on ; a growling, and a
rushing, and a tearing, and a worrying, all up and down the
grass-plat ; and Munchausen had got the best of it ; the
strange thing with ears all over it and the two long tails, as
he doubtless considered it, that had dared and enticed him by
its bristling and fluttering when he and the wind looked in at
the door, had drawn its own destruction down. Neither Aunt
Ildy, nor the politicians of to-day, could ever have recon-
structed that.
" What is it ? " cried out Richard, running after the dog, and
dragging a mouthful of straw and munched rag from him.
" What is it?" repeated Aunt Ildy, half in doubt herself, at
first, and then turning a swift scrutiny on me. "Why, it's
Anstiss Dolbeare's bonnet ! That's what it is." As much as
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 33
to say, " Could a dog's enormity go further than that? And
now be astounded, if you please ! "
" Is it much hurt?" asked Richard Hathaway, holding it up,
and speaking innocently.
I never had such a good time before in all my child-life as
I had wandering off through the sunny fields and sweet-smell-
ing orchards in my cape-bonnet, that day, with, him. Jabez
drove Mrs. Hathaway and Aunt Ildy to Broadfields, to meet-
ing ; and it was four o'clock when they came home to the Sun-
day tea-dinner.
Richard and I had carried our luncheon with us, of dough-
nuts and sage-cheese and peaches ; and had eaten it sitting on
a great gray rock by the river.
3
34 HITHERTO :
CHAPTER III.
SOME PEOPLE, AND OTHER PEOPLE.
NOBODY would have believed after all this, I certainly
would not have believed it beforehand, that the very next
Sunday I should go to meeting in New Oxford, with Aunt
Ildy, wearing a new Dunstable straw bonnet, with the identical
blue scarf tied across it, by Augusta Hare's own hands.
It was Augusta Hare who did it. Of course I told her all
my troubles Monday morning, when she walked " down street "
with the Edgells and me on our way to school. "We had come
in from the farm before breakfast, before Uncle Royle's,
that is ; for Mrs. Hathaway would by no means let any guest
depart from her door fasting ; and we had had the nice biscuits
out of the bake-kettle, and the coffee straight from the trivet
over the coals, and brown-bread cream toast, and baked beans,
left over the Sunday dinner, stirred to a delicious crispness in
the spider, at a quarter to six, and at a few minutes after the
hour had been on our way ; our wheels making clean lines
along the fresh, damp road, where the heavy dew had very
nearly been a white frost ; and all the clearness and tingle and
sparkle of far-off, rime-touched mountains and wide, breezy
lakes coming down about us in the morning wind from the
north-west.
Everybody was worth winning to Augusta Hare. The more
difficult the approach, the more persevering would be her par-
allels. She had set to work to win Aunt Ildy. I wished her
joy, at first, in her attempt ; then I stood by, wondering at
her success.
The truth was, Miss Chism was like the moon, she had two
faces ; one turned always toward those she immediately be-
longed to, as she went round and round in her uncompromis-
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 35
ing orbit qf daily work and duty ; the other toward the universe
at large. The moon analogy fails here, or rather becomes a
mysteiy ; whether she also wear a blander look out into space,
toward the distant planets, the desolation of her crags and
craters being all heaped up on her earthward side, niay
be or may not ; one cannot change one's position to remark ;
but when I saw Aunt Ildy from the stand-point of any who
approached her from the outside spaces about our own life, I
marvelled at what a little strangerhood could do. She seemed
ready to accredit such with all the virtues and graces that
made up her ideal measure, by which such human creatures as
had been closely proved and tried had miserably and ignomin-
iously failed. There were nicks and blemishes and parts
missing ; the pieces, therefore, must be somewhere. She took
it for granted that the Edgells were all that I was not. If I
quoted them, thinking to make argument and precedent in my
own behalf, I only got the consequent crushing comparison.
" Yes ; they have it ; but I suppose they take care of their
things," or, " they do, or go, thus and thither, to be sure ; but
they are to be trusted ; they behave."
I know of nothing at once more exasperating and demoral-
izing to a child than this ; it either knows a great deal better,
and that its companions are subject to all the like infirmities
with itself, and therefore impotently rages against the injus-
tice ; or it comes to think, at last, cowed by continual dispar-
agement and condemnation, that it is different from and
meaner than its fellows, and so to sink into a hopeless, cring-
ing, effortless self-despite.
Augusta Hare came over that very Monday afternoon with
a basket of fine Bartlett pears for Aunt Ildy from her uncle's
garden, with Mrs. Edgell's love and compliments ; also, she
wanted one of Miss Chism's wonderful receipts ; she gave a
hint, with an air of confidence and a half-aside from me, that
she was making up a manuscript receipt-book for herself,
against one of these days when she might come to want it ;
and Miss Chism's nod, and relaxing, benignant smile toward
her, and the hardness on the side of the face next me, as if
it were quite a pretty and natural thing for Augusta so
86 HITHERTO :
to look forward, but that I need not pretend to understand
or to be interested in what not only now, but at any distant
period whatever, could by no possibility concern such as I,
that, in fact, it was a presumption in me to be sitting by while
she said it, or even to be living and growing up in a world
where marrying and giving in marriage and having a house
and a way and a life of one's own could come to be in ques-
tion, was a marvellous and moonlike thing to see. But at
that time I had not yet studied astronomy ; I only felt un-
happy, and that I was on the rough, craggy, cratery side, as
usual.
Never mind. Augusta beamed and sparkled, and was
shone upon. And so she came round to the bonnet.
She apologized so prettily for the liberty that perhaps she
had taken ; " but Miss Chism had not been by to ask, and she
knew she was very busy. She was so used to trimming and
untrimming for herself, alone in the world as she was, that she
never considered ; and didn't Miss Chism think it was a good
thing for girls to learn a knack of the sort, of contrivance and
taste for themselves ? They could have so much more variety,
and it saved so much trouble and expense."
That last word, coming with such a charming deference to
the duty of economy from the young heiress of a whole street-
full of stores in H , and of unknown bank shares, finished
it with Aunt Ikty. It was like a decorous occasional rever-
ence manifested toward things sacred by a non-professor.
" That was true," she said, "where people had a knack,
and would not be 'always wasting and spoiling. But the vari-
ety, she didn't know about. She liked to wear things straight
through, and make them last the season."
"Oh, do you?" asked Augusta, with the most charming
candor and confidence. " Well, now I do like changing, if it's
only to put a bow on the other side, or move my bed across
my chamber. I'm always turning things round ; for my part
it seems to make them nicer and last longer."
" It's very well to wear a carpet even," admitted Aunt Ildy,
briefly.
(The very next day, upon the strength of this, I tried it by
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 37
putting the washstand and table in new places in our room,
when I was sent up to make the bed ; but the noise I made
brought up Auntlldy, as if it had been an incantation. " Isn't
that pleasanter?" I said, timidly. "And you can get to the
closet easier." "Are you possessed, Anstiss Dolbeare ? Put
those things back ; and when I'm ready for you to keep house
for me, I'll let you know ! " So I found out, speedily enough,
that some people are not other people.)
, Augusta was " so sorry to find that there had been an acci-
dent, that the bonnet was quite spoiled. She was going down
to the city with her uncle on Wednesday, and could she do
anything about replacing it for Miss Chism ? "
41 Perhaps she could get something prettier and cheaper than
in New Oxford, and the new fall styles would be out there."
" Didn't Miss Chism think a Dunstable would be better for
cool weather, and more durable ? It could always be bleached
and pressed so nicely, you know."
And when, by degrees, she had brought Miss Chism to listen
indulgently to all this, "wouldn't she, to show she wasn't
offended, just let Anstiss wear the blue ribbon, after all? "
All this by degrees, as I say, carefully feeling her steps.
She stayed to tea, and praised Aunt Ildy's drop-cakes, and fell
in love with the pink-edged cups, and insisted on having a
towel and helping to wipe them up afterward, and she wanted
to learn cribbage, and got her first initiation into the mysteries
of " fifteen two, fifteen four," while she was bringing it about ;
and the end was, almost without Aunt Ildy knowing it, that
she was led round to the very point she had set herself against.
Only it was a concession to Augusta Hare, and to circum-
stances, and by no means for the sake of pleasing me. The
gauze ribbons were chewed up ; and the blue scarf now was
" in the house." Aunt Ildy could not have so gone against
her creed and her instinct as to " buy new when old would
do." It had been on and off, and laid by ; it was old now, in
a sense ; the idea, at least, had ceased to be so offensively new
to Aunt Ildy, and her indignation had been appeased. I sat
by, and let them settle it ; as if, through my fault and my
punishment and my mortification, it had ceased to be of much
38 HITHERTO I
consequence to me how they decided. I did not do this, I
think, of deliberate art, but as simply taking the attitude Aunt
Ildy would expect of me ; and so things came round.
Only I was worse off by a suffering and a disappointment,
and a chilled, repulsed, inferior feeling, and a premature
lesson in diplomacy, and Aunt Ildy by the price of a new
Dunstable straw bonnet.
I wonder why such trifling episodes as these stand out first
and most clearly when I think of those young days? All my
life, to be sure, was made up of small, commonplace things ;
but why these should so live and last, stamped so ineffaceably
in their least details, that is what surprises me sometimes.
Ah, it is not the form life takes, but the living ! Under these
trifles of outward experience, something intense and in-
eradicable was shaping and vitalizing ; the moods and im-
pressions which these influences induced were becoming my
self; were determining my whole nature and fate.
I used to wonder, in a vague way, if ever things would
begin to concern me as they concerned others. If I should
ever have a definite part an interest of my own in this
earnest, urgent living that I saw about me in a world upon
whose mere skirts, as yet, I seemed to hang. I think Aunt
Ildy would have been frightened sometimes, if she could have
known the turn my repressed and restless thoughts and half-
understood longings were taking. I used to like to walk in
the burial-ground, I remember; the "graveyard" as we used
lugubriously to call it then, when churches were meeting-
houses ; and I used to feel sure of that one thing only ; that
this, at least, would come to me, as it came to all ; that I
should lie there with a gravestone at my head ; and it seemed
to me that I should be of more consequence then than I had
ever been before. I even wondered if Aunt Ildy would think
things "worth while," then, for me, as for anybody else?
Whether she would let a gravestone be carved, and whether she
would really wear a black bonnet, if I died ? I could not some-
how conceive of her doing so, only for' me. So many things
now, in my lifetime, never were worth while.
Augusta Hare went away from New Oxford at last, in a
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 39
fresh grandeur and environment of dignity and romance.
After many indecisions about the school to which she should
be sent, her own strong wish had carried the day against some
prejudices of her uncle, and it was decided for her to go to
the Convent of Ursuliue nuns at Charlestown, near Boston.
Her musical education, in which there was a real talent to be
taken into account, was the chief consideration in influencing
this result.
For nights, I could not sleep soundly, after I heard of this.
My imagination was stirred by all that was most poetical and
picturesque ; to say nothing of the religious element, which
added sublimity and awe. To live among cloistered women
wearing solemn, typical black veils, to call them Sister Mary
and Sister Agnes and Sister Annunciata, as they were called
in the stories I had read, to hear matins and vespers, to wor-
ship in a chapel, to eat in a refectory, to recite lessons to
people who had just done mystical penance ! To have all
this combined with the charm of ordinary boarding-school
association, so great to me, girls of an age classed together
for study, for recreation, for sleep evenj having the com-
munity and sympathy in all things which made even rigid
rules a delight, and stealthy grumblings and stolen privileges
an ecstasy ! I got all this jumble of fanciful ideas into my
head, and at this time there was nothing that seemed so
beautiful or so intensely desirable to me as to go to a convent ;
as a nun, if possible ; at least, as a scholar. I was so proud
of Augusta Hare's notice, and of knowing her so well ! I
told Lucretia, over and over, all that this heroine of mine could
tell to me, for the mere pleasure of saying the words ; I dare
say, although she was older and more sensible, and used to
remarkable things, Augusta's own pleasure in answering my
curiosity was not so very different.
The Edgells went away to school soon after ; they were dis-
appointed in not being with their cousin ; but though he had
3'ielded in her case, Mr. Edgell was firm as regarded Ids
daughters. It happened at last that they and Laura Cope
became pupils at the same institution, a } r oung ladies' semi-
nary in a town some thirty miles from New Oxford.
40 HITHERTO :
I speni an afternoon with them just before they left. I saw
their new trunks with their own names upon them, packed
with all manner of nice, plentiful clothing, to be worn at their
own discretion, arid with numberless articles of ladylike con-
venience suggested by motherly forethought or their own
wish. How beautifully their ruffles were all crimped ! I saw
Mrs. Edgell doing one with a delicate, thin-bladed, ivory knife,
as she sat in her little sewing-room where the girls ran in and
out, bringing me with them, asking half a hundred questions,
and contriving dozens of new wants. She was not impatient
with them ; her pleasure was in theirs. Oh, yes ; it was the
really poetical and beautiful thing to have an own mother !
I went " down street " with them to the confectioner's,
where they laid in store of " goodies " to take to school. They
spent, I think, three dollars apiece, that afternoon ; and we
came home laden with fragrant white paper parcels. There
were things among them that I never had heard the names of
before ; but then, I had never had three dollars in my life to
spend in confectionery, or at my own pleasure in any way.
After this, my days "went on and on." If I could escape
disgrace with Aunt Ildy, and get into Lucretia's room in the
afternoon with my mending, or into the garden with a book,
it was the sum of my desire and expectation. My lessons
were a pleasure to me ; I was ambitious and bright. I could
learn fast, and keep the head of my class. I brought home my
weekly reports, and Uncle Royle signed them ; he would have
a kind word for me when they were all " sixes and sevens,"
which, contrary to proverbial usage, indicated the best possi-
ble order of things on Mr. B 's book ; as to Aunt Ildy, I
don't remember her even looking at them. She inspected my
stockings, after I had darned them ; and they had need to be
firmly done^even to an improvement on the original texture ;
for if her strong fingers could go through a thin place,*or make
themselves visible under a careless cross-threading, there
would be no saving of time for me in that ! I accused her
sometimes, with rebellious indignation, of punching holes ; it
occurs to me that her fashion of moral inspection and criticism
was not far otherwise.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 41
I wore my Dunstable straw with the blue ribbon all the way
on into November until Thanksgiving. I got tired to death
of it ; I believe Aunt Ildy knew I would, and that that was
part of my punishment. She gave me my request, but sent
leanness into my soul. It had been a very pretty passing
fashion, retained only just so long as it could be what it ex-
pressed, a freshness and an unpremeditation ; an impromptu
of trimming, caught up and put on carelessly ; but it came,
with me, to be a thing as old and worn as a shoe-string. I
had to tie it on myself ever}' time I wore my bonnet ; and I
had not Augusta Hare's adroit fingers. The ropy part
twisted itself longer and longer with every wearing, and the
wrinkles came down into the floating ends ; the bow withered,
and would not stay picked out. It came to ironing, and the
whole looked streaked and faded. Other girls had new fall
trimmings of Bright crimsons and warm browns, crossed
snugly around the crowns, and nice bows made once for all on
the top ; while I put my bonnet on still, as I said privately to
Lucretia, with a garter. It was the bare prose that all things
came to, for me.
I began to wish, at scarcely thirteen, that I could be really
good enough not to care for anything. I had been good, a
little, several times already, and given it up. In moments of
spiritual depression, therefore, I feared, already, lest all should
be over with me, and that I could never be saved. I thought
I must be the one unmitigated thing or the other ; that if I
gave a thought to my new shoes, or took it into my head to
curl my hair, or cared for my composition getting the highest
mark and being read out on a Saturday, that I might as well
leave off reading ray Bible and saying my prayers. Indeed,
I truly believed that I should be a hypocrite if I kept on . I
must go in at the wicket-gate with Christian, and follow the
toilsome way, or I must stay in the City of Destruction, and
live the life of it. I must choose between the " Pilgrim's Prog-
ress " and my dear old novels ; and so it would be that some-
times one and sometimes the other would get the better of it
with me. Aunt Ildy believed in nothing that I did. She
could see, of course, when I was " trying ; " she gave me no
42 HITHERTO:
credit for it "H at the time, it was only one of my whims ;
she helped my unsteadiness with no Christianly patience ; but
I heard of it afterward, when I had grown bad again ; she
" thought the goodness wouldn't last long."
I wondered what the real world-and-devil-proof goodness
was made of; what it was w"s that happened to people who
were truly converted.
There was an awakened religious interest in the town this
very winter ; there were Thursday prayer-meetings for church-
members, which Aunt Ildy attended, and there were Bible-
classes and inquiry-meetings for the young. I went regularly
every Wednesday, at one time, to the minister's house ; this
was when my'bonnet was at the worst. I heard of one after
another having become hopeful, between night and morn-
ing, perhaps ; it was the news at school. I looked wonderingly
at companions who yesterday were sinners and to-day were
saints. I questioned why, with the same means of grace, and
the same wish and effort as I believed, it did not come to me.
I kept on patiently for a while, thinking that it would ; but I
could never honestly declare that it had. I was tempted pro-
fanely to compare it with Augusta Hare's boarding-school
pudding, which she had declined, for the reason that she saw
it wouldn't go round ; indeed, precisely what I was to look for,
of intense illumination or ecstasy, or vital, conscious, imme-
diate change, was to me the mystery ; and at last, one cold
Sunday, Aunt Ildy brought out my wine-colored merino coat
that I had worn three winters, and my bonnet, to which had
been given the day before its contemporary winter fittings of
the same color, lining of good, thick, old-fashioned satin, and
trimming of narrow velvet bands, in which I felt always
better dressed than in anything else I ever wore ; and I became
suddenly and hopelessly worldly again. Because I did take
comfort in them, after the pale, stringy, tiresome blue ribbon,
and such comfort was incompatible with the renouncing of the
flesh. Such was my religious experience at thirteen. Out of
it I came honest, and that was all.
Speculatively, I was at work, even then, upon matters of
faith. These came to me by suggestion, in my daily studies.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 43
I was learning chemistry this winter, and at the same time,
Paley's " Natural Theology ;" all about the watch, in that first
page, which, of whatever book, comes to be the page by heart
of the youthful reader or student, and then about the bones ;
in the other science, about the attractions, the affinities, the
atomic theory, and the forms of matter, solids, fluids, and
gases ; and what Swedenborgianism calls the " correspondence
of things " began to show itself to me. I had not got far
among the bones ; but an older class was near the end of the
book ;-and one day, I was in the upper room of the academy
now, there happened a talk between this class and Mr.
B , our teacher. Their lesson for the day occurred in the
chapter on the Personality of the Deity. The talk was upon
the different mental conceptions of God ; the image under
which we think of him, since some image, consciously or un-
consciously, we must make to ourselves. He was spoken of as
pure, pervading spirit, everywhere and in all things; "in
whom we live and move and have our being," enfolding us as
the air enfolds the earth, filling all space, animating all life,
quickening all spirit. Without touching upon dogma, in
which I now think he would not have taught us as many of
us were taught elsewhere, Mr. B spoke of all this, in
illustration of the idea possible to us of Omnipresent Being ;
and some girl asked suddenly, crimsoning with timidity as she
did so, while I crimsoned with sympathy, " If He is every-
where and fills all, how can any other spirit be created and
find room?"
I forget what our teacher answered ; I do not know that I
even listened to it. I only know that with a sudden tingle all
through me, soul and body, what seemed a great perception
came to me, an answer out of the chemical laws and facts
that I was learning, the sentence of Dalton, that " different
gases are as vacuums in respect to each other ; " that space
does not hinder them ; that they can diffuse, one into another,
intermingling, j r et not combining ; coexisting, and yet sepa-
rate. Behind this wonder of material fact, the spiritual truth
that was enshrined blazed forth. I got into my soul a revela-
tion of all possible spiritual closeness and presence ; ideas, old
44 HITHERTO :
enough in the world perhaps, but that filled me, seeming grand
and new, came, new and grand, to me ; I began my life-climb.
Meanwhile, pondering these things in my heart, I remained
at the outside, but a faulty, fitful child ; scarcely happy at
home, and of no consequence elsewhere ; before whom the
world looked at once tame and strange, barren and teeming,
mystical and dreary.
STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 45
CHAPTER IV.
"WHAT A VOICE TELLS.
THE SILENT SIDE.
A STORT by halves ; yes ; but that is not altogether enough
either. Something else a third must concern itself
now and then. No matter how, no matter who knows and
tells, or how they found it out. Two halves do not necessa-
rily make a whole one. The world is dual, we are told ; all crea-
tion running to pairs and complements ; oxygen and nitrogen,
oxygen and hydrogen ; night and day, up and down, right and
left ; but there is alwa}^ something behind ; an affinity, a
force, a backbone ; chemical attraction, centrifugal and cen-
tripetal power, gravitation, structural centre. That is what
something or somebody has got to be to whatever comes to be
told, or to be gathered to a unit, at last ; else it might stay in
halves, or piecemeal, forever. Ask no questions, therefore,
for conscience' or arithmetic's sake ; if there be a combining
agency, it is enough ; whether it work from sight or record,
hearsay or intuition, or here and there from each and all. A
silent story never will tell itself; not even, as a story, to it-
self. That which wrought in thought and heart-throbs, with-
out words, which took form in unnoticed, unobtrusive act,
whose truest pathos was hidden under commonplace, must be
rescued by some undeclared knowledge or insight, and trans-
lated, as best it maybe, into words. It will be only a transla-
tion, after all. None can repeat these things as they truly
write themselves, all around us, in the originals.
Outside circumstances also ; the bearing down and closing in
of all that shapes and alters, intermingles with and concerns ;
these must round out and perfect the meaning, and interpret
46 HITHERTO :
for our behoof. Stories outside of stories, and beside them ;
that is the way the world is woven together.
Richard Hathaway was jogging along up the river road
towards Broadfields from New Oxford, one winter's day, about
the time, or a little later than that, of these things that Anstiss
Dolbeare has been remembering.
The leather reins lay loosely along his horse's back ; the
horse taking way and time for himself; the sleigh-bells mark-
ing the regular double-beat upon the air of his slow-dropping
hoofs.
Richard Hathaway was thinking. Feeling, perhaps, most ;
that grand, unselfish, loving, patient, pitiful heart of his,
(what kind of a man, pray, do you describe when you speak
of a heart like that?) took the lead always; the clear, quiet
brain followed, and worked out the impulse. Did not prescribe
it ; there is that order and distinction of life in the natural
history of vertebrates, species, human, albeit not laid
down in books of the science. Richard Hathaway, belonging
to the first of these orders of life, born, moreover, to a plain
sphere and simple duties, was not brilliant. Slow, perhaps,
sometimes, in coming to conclusion or opinion ; never slow,
or slack in act, when he saw the thing to be done ; always
stanch and sure ; right there; loyal to the backbone ; careful
and kind for his mother, for every human creature ; for his
horse and his dog ; for every chicken and kitten on the place.
All over the farm the dumb creatures knew his ways and his
voice, and went trooping after him. It seems to me that the
nature of such a man has something of the great divine ele-
ment in it ; something that goes toward the Fatherhood of
God himself, rather than anything small or weak, as some
might say.
He was dressed in his every-day homespun, to-day ; they
wore homespun yet, of a week-day, the plain men about
Broadfields and New Oxford, who ploughed their own lands
and drove their own teams to market ; and the hum of the
old grandmother's spinning-wheels was heard yet in many an
upper chamber. There was nothing, truly, in his outer bear-
ing and equipment that bespoke him grand or chivalrous or
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 47
knightly ; that is why I must translate the silent side. A
simple soul, come to his young manhood half-a-dozen cen-
turies too late for vigil and accolade, and vow and emprise ; he
had not ridden forth that morning in plumed helmet and shining
armor, with lance in rest ; not even in a chariot-aud-six like Sir
Charles Grandison ; he had only driven an old horse in a large
wagon-sleigh to carry some barrels of apples and some tubs
of cider apple-sauce down to New Oxford for the distant city
market ; but I will tell you what he had done. He knew of
somebody who needed him, and a small kindness that he could
give and never forgot, and he had come back four miles
around out of his way in the stinging winter cold after an
errand to the next village below, that he might return through
New Oxford ; that he might stop again at Royle Chism's, and
look in at the post-office, where there was precious little likeli-
hood of anything more for him since morning, when he had
got two letters, his mail for the week ; that he might also go
in to the back sitting-room, and stay talking with Miss Chism
for nearly an hour, till Anstiss came from afternoon school,
and he could see for himself how she was to-day, and give her
the pearmains he had in his pocket for her, such pearmains
as only grew on the Hathaway place, and there on but one old
tree. He hadn't had a chance fairly to see her in the morning ;
only through the kitchen door, as she sat there busy about
something for Aunt Ildy, which it would have been a little
piece of anarchy for her to leave.
He was riding home now, thinking some such thoughts as
these :
" Mother doesn't know. How should she? She doesn't see
them every week, or oftener, as I do. She doesn't see the
little face light up, and then the cowed-down, miserable look
come over it, when that woman, that ought to be a mother to
her, comes near, and the child don't dare to let her notice that
she's taking a minute's comfoi't, for fear it should be cut short
and she be ordered off. She always is ordered off. Why
can't she have an idle minute, I wonder? People can't grow
unless they have a chance to stretch now and then, men
48 HITHERTO :
and women, any more than babies ; to say nothing of a young,
longing thing like her.
"Mother couldn't interfere, either, I suppose, if she did
know. Everybody says Miss Chism does her duty by the
child ; and it's only her way. I wonder if the way people get
with them isn't something to be accountable for, though?
I've no business to think about it perhaps, not being religious ;
but what if the Loi-d Almighty did so by us? What if he had
a " way " too, that hadn't any sunshine, nor any pleasantness,
nor any rest in it? He might grind us round, so, somehow,
I dare say ; and give us our daily bread, notwithstanding.
Start up, old Puttertroo. Nobody asked you to medi-
tate.
" I wish I had her by me, now, riding out to the farm ; to
suck sweet cider and hunt hens' eggs, and help mother make
her Thanksgiving. Why need Aunt Ildy have snubbed her
so, if she couldn't be trusted to beat sponge cake ? She might
do something, I guess, besides stone those eternal raisins.
The way to make folks trusty is to begin to trust. I'd trust
her, with that little, earnest pleading way of hers, if it ivas
the spoiling of a mess or so.
" She thinks too much. She's continually worrying about
what fors and whys. Look in her face sometimes, you'd sup-
pose she was twenty. I'd like to set the clock back for her a
good half-dozen years ; she'd gain, then.
"I wish Miss Ildy'd get married, or something else. Or
that they might be burnt out, and nobody hurt, and not much
loss ; or that somebody in England would leave 'ern a fortune
that'd have to be gone after. Something ought to come to
pass. I'd like to get her home with us awhile. It's the kind
of a place where she'd ought to be.
" Miss Ildy says she's fractious and flighty and impudent.
I'd risk it. I never saw anything of it, and I've seen her when
I should have been all three. 'That's because it's you,' says
Miss Chism. e She knows when to hold her tongue.' It seems
to me that's sufficient, and she's learnt early. And it would be
for me and mother.
" We could'nt do all she'd want, I know. She wants
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 49
somebody to answer the what foi's. I don't know as she'll
ever find that, though. It's more asking than answering in
this world, in most things. Asking back again, or asking on.
Books and sermons don't amount to much more.
" She wants somebody now, right off, to make a pleasant-
ness round her. That's what people can do for each other.
She don't seem to get smy child-comfort. She's never been
taken up in anybody's lap. Miss Chism won't cosset any-
thing. She says it gives kittens fits. That settles the matter,
I suppose, for all creation.
" I wish mother could see any way to manage. ' Winter's no
time,' she says. 'The best room's cold, and Miss Chism
wouldn't think of coming.' But there's the little press-room
between mother's and the kitchen, if Nansie could only come
by herself. That's as warm as need be, and not lonesome.
" They need not be afraid about her getting there. I'd wrap
her up in buffaloes till she wouldn't know she was out doors.
" I'll try Miss Chism myself. It'll never do to stop her
school, and give her nothing else to take up her mind. She'd
only be pining after her books. Royle Chism is talking of that. %
' She's ailing,' he says, ' and she shall leave off studying and
have the doctor.' Perhaps I could put a kink into Royle' s
head, and he into the doctor's. A change is always easy to
prescribe ; and Pulsifeare's an honest old soul, who wouldn't
shove aside common sense for the sake of hanging on with
pills and visits.
" She was pretty still and sober to-day ; and she went right
off upstairs with her books. She did'nt know how long I'd
been waiting. Perhaps she'd missed a lesson, along of those
raisins in the morning. I dare sny she's tired of the pear-
mains ; I'll carry her something else next time. I'll shell out
some butternuts and shagbarks ; and maybe mother'll make
some candy." *
Very homely thoughts ; and homely consolations that he
planned. It is plain that he could put none of the poetry that
Anstiss Dolbeare longed for against the weary prose of her
life, is it not? Are you sure, though, what the poetry of life
is, when spiritual analysis gets it down to its very elements ?
50 HITHERTO:
A week later, there was a great stir in the little press-room.
Boxes and trunks were drawn out from under the broad shelf that
ran across one whole side, against a window ; blankets and
comfortables that had been piled upon it were taken down, and
all were carried away to an upstairs room, and bestowed in a
large, light closet. The shelf itself was removed, and then
the sunlight got in at the window, and the little apartment,
which had used in old times to be a bedroom, showed its real
dimensions.
Richard and his man Jabez did all this ; and then Mrs.
Hathaway's Martha came in and swept and scoured. A cot
bedstead was put up, and a triangular shelf across a corner,
beneath where the large one had been, was transformed by
a white cover and a flounce to a quaint little dressing-table,
elegant enough in its way, with a looking-glass in a carved
frame tilted forward from the angle above it, and a great
ruffled pin-cushion lying before it, and a silver candlestick and
snuffers standing beside. In another corner was a wasli ing-
stand, with a high old china ewer, and broad, shallow basin,
buff, with delicate roses running and blowing all over
them. Richard remembered these old things, and would have
them got out, for lie knew they would just suit Anstiss Dol-
beare's fancy ; " and she's to be pleased, you see, mother ;
that's the main thing now ; that's what's to do her good."
" It'll be mild to-morrow," he was thinking to himself, stop-
ping there when all was done, as he came through from Mrs.
Hathawaj^'s room, and looked out at the bright little window
that seemed to sparkle all over with delight at its own capac-
ity to take in sunshine as fast, in proportion, as its- biggers
and betters, when opportunity was given, and where the long
slants from the clear west struck through and smote them-
selves obliquely upon the face of the mirror opposite, diverg-
ing thence by just the angle of reflection to light up the roses
on the buff china, opposite again ; like a sort of dance-figure
as it was, leading up and across till all the little place was
gay, and everything had had its turn.
"The wind's stilled down, and the sky looks mellow. I'll
take the little sleigh, and the two big robes and the foot-stove.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 51
"We'll get her here just about this time, and mother'll bring
her into this little nest, and speak to her in her kind way, and
make her welcome. It's a complete home of itself where
mother is. She's a good woman. And when you say a
good woman you've said a whole Bible full.
" Let me see, though ; the little sleigh? There's that trace
to be mended. Jabez'll have the small pung, and he'll want
a light harness too. Lucky I thought of it ! And it's a
chance if he's got those carrots up from the cider-mill cellar,
while I've been pntter-kooing hei'e.
" Mun, you rascal! what are you looking for? Straw
bonnets? Can't have 'em. Off with you, sir! Somebody
at the door, hey? Tell 'em I'm coming. Hope it's Kilham,
about that bargain. If I can get him down to sixty, it'll be
three hundred, and that's enough ; a fair trade for both ; and
it just squares my upland. Half-a-dozen years hence, if I've
any luck, it'll be the finest "
The silent side' is fragmentary ; a man doesn't think on
in a straight line through a mile-long chapter ; neither does
he think all on one thread. Richard Hathaway was a good
farmer, and a stirring man ; all the more is it proof of his
great kindness that he could stay, as he called it " putter-
kooing" here.
Anstiss Dolbeare remembers what came next.
52 HITHERTO:
CHAPTER V.
JASPEE.
WHAT a new living it was to me all at once when they let
me go out to the Farm, that winter ! Uncle Royle and the
doctor and the Hathaways managed it. Aunt Ildy didn't
really object ; but she went round with that way of hers that
seemed to be saying all the time, " Oh, yes ; you've contrived ! "
It made me have a mean, guilty feeling all the time she was
packing up my things, as if I'd stolen her cake, or something.
She always thought I contrived. I did ask her for things
sometimes, when Uncle Ro.yle was in the room. I saved up
my asking till he was there, when I wanted anything very
much indeed ; and I suppose this was contriving ; but I always
asked her ; and I never went to him after she had said no. I
don't know but most people would put an umbrella up, if they
had one, when it was likely to rain. I forgot the umbrella
often enough, however, for many a sprinkle to dampen my
best things.
It was as if I had died and gone to heaven, almost.
The air was so soft that afternoon, with the softness that
comes in a south wind over the snow ; so tender, so promising
of the warmth waiting somewhere, and coming by and by. In
an air like that, yon. can seem to smell the very blue of the
sky, and the pure sweetness of the river water ; there are no
flowers, or grass, or leaves ; so where else can the pleasantness
come from? 9
I was almost too warm, wrapped up in the big buffaloes ;
and Mrs. Hathaway had sent her foot-stove, besides. Richard
did not tell me that till we drove off. Aunt Ildy had a foot-
stove too, and there was a soapstone that she kept in the
oven ; but she had not thought of them, and it was better not
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 53
to say anything. I should never have thought of Aunt Ildy's
foot-stove being warmed up for me. He just tucked it under
ray feet after we started. I suppose he got hot coals out of
the office before I came downstairs. Richard. Hathaway al-
ways thought of everything.
He asked me if I thought I could be contented. He told
me of the things that we could do in the evenings ; he had
made a fox-and-geese board for me, with morrice on the other
side. I didn't know morrice, but he would show me ; and we
would pop corn, and roast great sweet apples, and make candy
such as that Mrs. Hathaway sent me. He would crack the
nuts, and I should pick them out, while Mrs. Hathaway would
stir the molasses and sugar. And the Kilhains would come
over and take tea, and we would play games. I was not to
think nor to study ; but just to be " as little a girl as I could,''
he said.
I felt like such a little girl while he was talking ! Such a
tj. little girl as I had never, really, been. I believe there is
something childish in me now that can go back to that, if ever
anybody makes much of me, I had so little of it when I was
small. I have noticed that in myself, always ; that the feel-
ings and wants that got least answered in the time of them
kept freshest into the later years ; al\va}'s ready to live their
life and take their good whenever it could come. I think it
may be so, on beyond the grave. I think that some of our
disappointed longings keep us fresh for what waits for us there.
Something simple and sweet touches and fills me, thinking
of those days, and that coming to the Hathaways. I can only
say over to myself the things that I remember then, in the
veiy easiest and most unpretending words, as a child would.
Mrs. Hathaway kissed me when she lifted me out on the door-
stone. Nobody ever kissed me at home. Uncle Ro3 r le never
thought of it, and Aunt Ildy didn't approve of kissing. She
thought people could show their love in better ways. Some-
times, when I had been very sorry for some naughtiness, and
meant truly to be good, and thought if I only had been always
good Aunt Ildy might have loved me, for that she was a good
woman, and said she always loved what deserved it, when
54 HITHERTO:
I wanted so to creep into a little corner of her heart, seeing
that if I hadn't her I hadn't anybody, and to be allowed at
least to care for her, I would do something, some very dis-
agreeable and tedious thing perhaps, that she had given me,
very nicely and patiently, and be very gentle and mindful all
day ; and then at night I would go up to her and put my arms
round her, and kiss her. She would let me do this, at such
times ; and it made me very happy. I don't remember her
ever kissing me back.
But Mrs. Hathaway kissed me on both cheeks, and then she
took me through the hall and the breakfast-room, to a little
room I never remembered seeing before, just beside the kitch-
en and opening into it. Such a dear little place ! A low win-
dow looking right out on to a bank where the white snow lay
then ; but the green grass would be in summer, and the sunset
streaming in ; a shining yellow floor, and a strip of warm
carpet in the middle ; a little flounced corner toilet-table, and
a wash-stand, with what looked like a basket and a vase of
roses to wash out of and to hold the water ; hooks to hang
my clothes on, and a door each way, into the kitchen and
her chamber.
" You won't mind my coming through," she said. " And
the kitchen makes it warm."
" Everything makes it warm ! " I couldn't help answering,
just so ; and I turned round and put up my face to kiss her
again. Somehow, one always knows when one may do that.
I have often thought of it ; it is as if the kiss were waiting.
She had made it so beautiful for me ! If it were only just
not a visit, but I could live there always. There was just
that pain in it. It was not really my life ; but more like the
afternoons I spent with the Edgells, only greater ; a piece lent
me out of other people's lives.
I remember how piercing cold it was next morning. Down
came the wind from the north-west, from the polar plains,
and the frozen lakes, and the great, bleak mountain ridges,
whose peaks are always radiating off the warmth of the earth's
heart into space, and down whose sides rush the fierce blasts
that come out of the chill and emptiness, angry at the comfort
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 55
that nestles about sheltered human homes, to howl and shriek
at it and rend it away. Only a little corner, here and there,
can the}' touch and lift, though, showing so the deep? safe
soul and glow of it, in homes like Hathaway Farmhouse.
I remember how Richard came in to the breakfast-room,
rubbing his hands, from his early visit to the barns andthe
cattle ; and how we heard Jabez stamping and puffing into the
kitchen ; how the coffee steamed, and how the sun sparkled
in through the frosted windows ; how the old cat stretched
by the fire, and the great logs crackled and hissed out froth
and steam at their ends, and my forehead and cheeks burned
as I sat in the low chair in the corner.
" Not a bit in the way," Mrs. Hathaway said, when I asked
her. I couldn't help feeling as if I ought to move though,
and making little involuntary stirs every time she came near.
I was so used to it with Aunt Ildy. She always wanted some-
thing just where I was, or to poke the fire, or brush the hearth,
or I was started off upon an errand to the kitchen, or she had
seen something of mine lying about; and it was, "There
are your books, Anstiss, on the kitchen table ; " or, " Your
coat's down, in the corner behind the entry door ; " or, " You
haven't taken the bedclothes off and opened the window."
Nobody can tell what a rest it was to me, when I did get
used to it a little, to feel that I might sit still sometimes and
not be routed out.
Mrs. Hathaway and Aunt Ildy were both good house-keep-
ers ; but this was the difference between them. Everything
got done at the farm, as regularly as at Uncle Royle's, only
nobody was put out. Mrs. Hathaway did not hesitate to
make me of use in little ways ; but somehow it never inter-
fered. It made Aunt Ildy restless, in her conscience, I
verily believe, only to see a person reading a book, or
warming their feet, or sitting at a window to watch the sun-
set, so long as she could possibly find anything for them to
do. I never could help thinking of her when I read in the
Bible of Martha of Bethany. I have wondered, since I have
been older, if it might not have been just that uncomfortable-
ness that the Lord rebuked in her.
56 HITHERTO :
It was such pretty work to put the little press-chamber
straight ! I wished so I might ever have a little place like
that till to myself, at home ; and I thought over what little
inventions of adornment I might dare to introduce, if I should.
"We made cake that morning, Mrs. Hathaway and I. She
expected some young folks to tea, she said, the next night.
She gave me the pleasant parts. I beat up the whites of the
eggs while she did the yolks. At home, I always had to beat
the yolks. Martha stii'red the butter and sugar ; and then the
beautiful silver and gold of the eggs were added, and Mrs.
Hathaway put the gi*eat wooden spoon into my hand, and
asked me to " toss it together while she could see to the
flour," that was not quite cool from the drying. I cut up the
citron while she beat the heavier mixture of the whole. " Take
a little toll, Nansie, if you like," she told me. " 7 can't cut
up citron without a bit in my mouth." It didn't seem like
work ; it was clear play.
In the afternoon, Richard came in early. He showed me
morrice before tea ; and we played in the firelight till I could
beat him, making a whip-row every time. I felt afraid we
should use up everything in one day, I was having such a
good time.
But there was always something new, or something that did
not use up. Richard found me "Gulliver's Travels," and " Baron
Munchausen." I read these in the mornings, when Mrs. Hath-
away was busy with things I could not help her in. The Kil-
hams came to tea the second night ; and we played old-fash-
ioned games of cards : " Lend me your bundle, neighbor," and
" Old Maid." How they all laughed when Richard Hathaway
was left Old Maid ! But then he made up such funny faces
when he got the queen ; everybody always knew where she
was. Yes, I do feel like a child again, thinking these
things over. In the light of all that has happened since, I go
back to them with something besides that simpleness ; they
seem sacred to me.
We had a party one night, at last, a real country party.
The great sitting-room and the best parlor were lighted up,
with wood-fires and candles in the old silver branches under
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 57
the round mirrors ; and the stove in the hall was almost red-
hot ; but it had a high sheet-iron fender round it, and we
danced reels, and played " Blind-man's Buff," and " Still
Palm," and " I had as many wives," and forfeits. I had to
" bow to the wittiest, kneel to the prettiest, and kiss the one
I loved best." So I bowed to Jeffrey Freeman, he was the
funny 3'oung man of the neighborhood ; he joked till nobody
ever suspected him of being in earnest ; they said that was the
reason he never got married ; he said it was the reason he
hadn't been a minister.
There was no doubt about the prettiest. Lucy Kilham was
like a wild rose, so simple and bright and delicate.
There was not much question as to the loving best ; I looked
about for dear Mrs. Hathaway ; but she was not in the hall.
She had gone to see after the " treat " which was being laid
out in the breakfast-room, thence to be brought out and
handed round at half-past nine. I stopped then, and hesi-
tated. Only for a minute though. Richard stood against the
parlor door, and I met his eye, watching me with the old, kind
gladness ; glad to see me bright and happy, I knew.
I walked somewhat slowly, over toward him ; I could not
help so far signifying him ; but I was not quite sure, even
when I came to him, whether I would do more. I was only
thirteen, and I thought no harm ; if I had been more used to
home-caressing, I should have scarcely felt an awkwardness,
for there had been plenty of meriy kissing-penalties all
through the game ; I paused and looked up at him, and he bent
his head down then I reached up to him and just touched
his cheek. He did not kiss me back ; indeed, I did not give
him time ; there was a flush in his face as he raised it again,
and I was afraid, for a second, that he did not like what I had
done ; but he kept hold of my hand which he had taken, and
drew me to a place beside him against the wall ; and I saw in
his eyes and about his lips the look that I never saw in any
man's face but Richard Hathaway's, a look that he had when
he was moved, a sort of large, tender shining from under
lids a little lifted, and a curve of the mouth that went with
that, betraying a heart-stir hidden and quiet, but very strong.
58 HITHERTO :
He looked like that sometimes when his mother praised him,
or when he heard of some grand happening or doing ; or if
any soul, or any creature, showed a love or gratitude for him
when he had given a help or soothed a pain. I have seen him
look like that upon a little child, too small to speak, that
stretched its arms to him ; I have seen him look like that upon
a sick woman to whose side he had come, tenderly ; it was a
spirit great to very gentleness that so revealed itself; they
were moments when he showed noblest. If I could have
thought of him so always, in those 3"ears that came on after !
But he was silent ; homely in his ordinary ways ; content with
simple, common things ; and I was full of dreams.
I think Mrs. Hathaway always liked Lucy Kilham. I
noticed that night how she spoke to her in a different way,
kind as she was, from her kindness to anybody else ; and how
she looked at Richard and at her when it was Richard's turn
to redeem a forfeit by and by, and he had to do the same
thing that I had done. He bowed to Lucy, of course ; eveiy-
body did ; I wondered if Mrs. Hathaway thought of anything
else ; and then he went and gave the kiss to his mother. I
thought she looked somehow as if she only took it to keep
safely for a while.
I felt how nice it was to be pretty, like Lucy. I would
rather, I thought, have had a face like hers than anything else
in the woi'ld. There are many different types of women's
. beauty ; I had not learned then, to read or to discern them all ;
and Lucy Kilham's was at that time, and for years, my ideal.
It was of the same, and }~et not really at all like Augusta
Hare's. Augusta's was more conscious, and animated, and co-
quettish ; she knew better how to show off her gift. Lucy
just was pretty. Wherever she stood or sat, there was the
light of the room ; to my thought, she was the part}] ; the rest
were only the people. Her brown hair, lying in a soft curve
along the fair broad brow and temples, and tucked off care-
lessly over the small ear ; her large, gray-hazel eyes with the
dark lashes and the straight, slender pencilling above them ; the
little dimpled knitting of the forehead that was a habit, and gave
her a sort of tender, half-troubled look ; the straight, deli-
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 59
cate nose ; the mouth, so perfectly imprinted and so sweetly
set, its corners tucking themselves away in dimples when she
smiled or spoke, and showing the little unobtrusive white teeth
that met each other with such a charm of exactness and cosey
closeness (Mrs. Hathaway said her mouth and chin were
like nothing but a fresh-made butter-pat), these made me
look and follow her till I forgot I might be staring ; they made
me wonder, envyingly, what it would seem like to look like
that ; to brush that beautiful dark hair that could not go amiss
over such a clear, lovely forehead, and to talk and laugh with
such bewitching furnishings as hers.
I can think now, just how I looked that night in the corner
glass, when I went to undress in the press-chamber. I took
especial notice, for I wanted to find out. What I did see, I
know now was a face pretty enough in its own way, though I
slighted it so utterly in my opinion then, possessed with but
one conception. Round, and flushed to a bright rosiness with
excitement and fast-returning health ; the eyes blue and in-
tense from a fire within, and the color that like the bloom of
art heightened their effect ; hair soft and shining, tossed
about to a light fulness out of the set lines in which it would
not stay, all this I saw, and only perceived that it was not a
bit like the sweet regularity and wonderful fairness that had
so captivated me. The nose turned up a little, and the mouth
was too undefined. I tried to accomplish the little pucker be-
tween the brows that Lucy Kilham had ; but my first essay
at expression-practising disheartened me. It didn't suit with
the rest ; and, besides that, I didn't see how she made it stay.
I came to the conclusion that I was frightfully ugly, and blew
out my light and undressed in the dark.
It was not for what beauty could do for me ; I wanted
nothing of it except itself; but everything was so common
with me !
Well, after all, one could be but common, and yet have
a bright, good time. I reconciled myself to that, made my
dress especially trig and tidy, and went into the briskness and
business of Thanksgiving preparation with my kind enter-
tainer.
60 HITHERTO :
i
We all sat and stoned raisins together, for two or three
evenings beforehand ; Mrs. Hathaway, Martha, Richard, and I.
We each had a plate and a knitting-needle, and the two dishes
of fruit, stoned andunstoned, stood midway in the round table,
accessible to all.
Then there was citron to slice again ; and lemon-peel to
shave, and to cut into the minutest shreds with small, bright
scissors. Richard shaved it, and I took the thin, curling,
fragrant rings as they fell from his fingers, and snipped them
up.
How nice the things looked, all sorted out in the pantry !
I felt a little tender self-reproach, thinking of Aunt Ildy work-
ing all alone. She had been good to let me come ; when I
got back I would try and be a better girl.
Richard's married sister and her husband and children came
that year all the way from Schenectady ; and his brother John
came home from somewhere beyond in New York State.
John was going to be married out there ; after this, his
Thanksgivings would be divided, and rarer yet in Broad-
fields.
I helped Mrs. Hathaway bring clown the linen to be aired ;
and I counted over the best napkins, and rubbed the silver ;
I dusted the spare rooms, and laid out towels, and filled the
pitchers. We did all this, and laid the table in the long sit-
ting-room, the day before. The pies were baked, and plum-pud-
dings ready, and all were ranged in goodly show upon the
shelves ; and the whole hall, into which the pantry opened,
was redolent with sweet, rich odors. " Spicy breezes " Richard
called them ; and he went about singing the second verse of
the Missionary Hymn.
I myself had rolled out and filled the rnince turnovers for the
children, and printed the edges with a little key. I felt so
housewifely and blithe ; I found that there were really many
good things that one could do and be, if nothing especial had
come to one in the way of a fair face or a rare fortune. I was
here in the way of a true healthiness of living.
Mrs. Kingsdon arrived, with Mr. Kingsdoii and the children.
I went upstairs with the little ones, and helped to put them
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 61
to bed in the south-west room, where I had suffered my
punishment last summer. There was a fire blazing there now,
and the shutters were all fast closed. -The shadows from the
fire-light danced over the ceiling, and the large white bed
and the little trundle-bed were luminous with their fresh
pillows and coverlets.
I think a fire upstairs is such an especially pleasant thing.
It is associated for me with rare indulgence ; times of mild
measles and moderate hooping-cough, when my room was
warmed and brightened so, and I lay in the twilights and the
evenings with the cheer about me, feeling a sweet rest, and
watching Lucretia as she would sit with her knitting-work in
her rocking-chair by the hearth, casting a grotesque figure and
motion all across the ceiling with her shadow as she vibrated
to and fro, plying the slender implements that magnified to
huge beams and battering rams and made most awful threats
and passes overhead.
I shaped rabbits and sheep and foxes for the children with
my fingers, and made them leap, and nibble, and snap great
jaws upon the wall. I pretended to lose little saucy Jimmy,
who squatted in his scrap of flannel shirt in the farthest corner,
his pudsy hands upon his dimpled knees, and shrieked with
laughter when I passed him by. They wanted " something
put beside their beds," and I went downstairs and brought
back small, round, sugared cakes that had been baked on pur-
pose. They looked at them, and laid them down in perfect
content and loftiest honor, not to be touched till they had
truly been asleep, and said their prayers, and tried to shut
their little winking, wakeful eyes, and keep them so.
I left them then, as Mrs. Kingsdon had told me. In the
morning, by daylight, she said, they were all astir, and nib-
bling like little mice.
When I could no longer do anything for these little crea-
tures, I stood aside, and half wished that -I were but one of them ;
one of a family, with all the happy growing-up before me.
Next to that, I would have liked to be their older sister. I
was only thirteen, and it never occurred to me to think of
62 HITHERTO:
motherhood to such ; nevertheless, I believe that, even, may
have been, unconsciously in my heart.
Afterward came quiet days by ourselves ; and the time drew
toward the end of my stay at Broadfields.
I remember the afternoons, when Mrs. Hathaway, in her
brown merino gown, and white bobbinet neckerchief, with the
large gold beads the heir-loom from mother to daughter in
so many New England country families around her throat,
would sit by the little room window with her knitting-work,
or the weekly newspaper which she read in bits and over and
over for secular literature ; and the Sundays, when, in black
silk and best cap, she would sit in the same place, and the
reading would be a chapter or two in the great family Bible
laid across her knees. She would give me at the same time a
large-print Testament, and I would turn it over to my
favorite places in Revelation, and read about the heavenly
city.
The little-room window looked to the east ; Mrs. Hatha-
w.ay's room and the press-chamber were in the kitchen L, and
on the western side. There was the early sun to breakfast in,
and the last twilight to go to bed with, or to follow. It is a
good and a cheery thing so to travel with the ciay.
But I liked the looking out eastward for a Avhile in the late
afternoon light, also. There was the bare top of Red Hill
right over against us, and it took its color from the gorgeous-
ness opposite ; and the clouds above it were deeply crimson
and tenderly pink before they settled into the evening gray.
There was jasper on Red Hill, from which it had its name.
I was asking Richard about it the last Sunday evening before
I went away. I had never seen any jasper ; and it seemed to
me something wonderful that the stone, which is the lower
foundation of the holy Jerusalem, should be found in frag-
ments there, close by us, on Red Hill. I knew these words
and names were emblems ; still it gave me a feeling as if Red
Hill must be mysteriously near to heaven.
"I have a piece upstairs, polished," Richai'd said, when I
had told him this ; and he went and brought it for me. It was
an irregular oval ; smooth, flat on one side, and rising to a
A STOUT OF YESTERDAYS. 63
cone-like ridge upon the other ; of a deep, rich red, made
bright with the perfect gloss to which it had been brought. I
held it in my hands with pleasure.
Presently, I turned to my Testament, and read over the
stones aloud, naming their colors. I had found them out by
asking, and by searching in a dictionary of minerals at school.
I had thought them over and imaged them to myself till I
knew them by heart, and, inwardly, by sight.
" Jasper, crimson ; sapphire, blue ; chalcedony, pure, lus-
trous, waxy white ; emerald, deep, full green ; sardoiryx,
red sardius and white chalcedony in turn ; sardius, blood-red ;
chrysolite, clear, transparent green ; beryl, pale blue ; topaz,
yellow ; chiysoprase, bright leek-green ; jacinth, purple ; ame-
tlryst, violet."
" That is the way they go," I said to Richard, in a child's
homely phrase, but feeling a great beauty as I spoke. From
this darkest, up through all others to violet, just like the rain-
bow. What do colors mean, Richard ? In the beginning of
the Bible is the rainbow ; that io the covenant ; and here at
the end is the rainbow of precious stones ; the solid one ; the
wall of the holy Jerusalem. And the gates are pearls, pure
white."
" Nobody knows what it means," said Richard.
" But it does mean," I persisted. " They wouldn't be called
by names of things we know if we weren't to find out."
" It's just a description ; nobody understands it," Richard
repeated, vaguely.
" Don't 3'ou care?" I asked, impatiently.
" I care most for things that are plain and real ; I think
that's the best way," he answered. " You may keep the jas-
per, Nansie ; next summer we'll go up Red Hill and get more."
I was disappointed with Richard. This was one of the ends
at which he always stopped. He could help me so in common
things ; he could make everything so pleasant to me ; but he
would not help me think.
I shut up the Testament, and turned away to the window,
looking up at Red Hill ; and I would not say any more. I
forgot to thank him even, for the jasper. I dare say he was
64 HITHERTO :
dissatisfied too, thinking me visionary and fantastic. He al-
ways seemed afraid of that for me.
Mrs. Hathaway had taken off her spectacles while we talked,
and sat looking over at us. She could see both our faces.
" O you foolish children ! " she said, in a sort of loving,-
pitiful way. " One begins backwards, and the other doesn't
begin at all, by appointed means. The way to Revelation
is all through Matthew and Mark, Luke and John. When
you've done all that, then you'll come to the jasper walls and
the gates of pearl."
She was always anxious, religiously, about Richard ; the
more, I believe, because he was by nature so good already.
She had been taught to believe that a sweet nature might even
hinder grace. " To enter in by the door into the sheep-fold,"
that, in her understanding of it, was what she always
longed for in his behalf.
I looked round, and Richard smiled. Something pleased,
or amused, him in his mother's speech ; her calling us both
children alike, I think, when he was one-and-twenty, and I
just entered into my teens.
" Come, Nansie," he said ; " put on your rubbers and wraps,
and we'll carry some milk to the kittens in the barn." He
never forgot a want that he could answer ; and he was always
nobly patient ; I think, now, that these had something to do
with Matthew and Mark, Luke and John, whether of a pur-
pose or not. But I went with him that night, only half
pleased.
I wished so I could have somebody to talk to ; to say my
fancies out to, and have them reasoned into something or
nothing. I could not do it with Mrs. Hathaway ; not upon
these subjects ; with her there was only one question to be
asked, anxiously and first. Perhaps I was coming being
led to it, though it were backward even. There is one
Door ; but they come from the east and the west, the north
and the south, to sit down in the kingdom.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 65
CHAPTER VI.
A THREAD BROUGHT UP.
FROM farther back and away off.
Up into New Hampshire, to a little human home upon first
principles ; to a very beginning of things we must come, to
find the starting-point of that which grows to be an element,
pretty soon, in these lives with which we have to do.
It was under a wild hill, in a little red house, with no other
near, only a scrap of clearing in front, down to the river,
where a bit of one-handed farming was done ; and a peep of
far-off roofs between the distant slopes of the long, deep val-
ley. Here, once upon a time, there lived as happy a young
couple as any in all the State.
Nothing on earth to worry them ; nothing to lose ; little to
want ; everything in life to look for and to gain. Working
up ; beginning a long way down, but feeling the great joy of
the beginning ; strong and cheery, both of them ; their very
pulses one with the great pulse of nature about them ; some-
thing of the mountain and the river taken, day by day, into
the spirit, and sent forth in act ; they grew, as it were, to the
color of their abode and nourishing, as a woodpecker grows
to the gray of a tree-trunk, and the katydid is brilliant with
the green of the leafage.
They came here out of the village together. Geoi'ge De-
vine had got the help of stalwart friends, and raised his house-
frame ; and with a job hired irregularly, now and again, had
boarded it in and shingled it, mainly with his own hands.
Persis wove her own sheets and pillow-cases ; " hired out " for
a winter, and bought a best gown and a new bonnet and a tea-
set ; and they were married on a June day, and came home to
pick wild strawberries on the hill-side, and make a johnny-cake
5
66 HITHERTO:
for supper ; and to feel just as well off, and a great deal better
able to take in the full content of it all, than if they had had
a hundred weight of silver to bring with them and to be be-
holden to fashionable friends for, and a grand reception to
give next week.
The birds and the river serenaded them ; tame little red
squirrels came and made morning calls upon them ; and in the
twilights and on the Sundays, friends walked up the wood-
path between great oaks and beeches, a grand approach,
such as men, with monstrous outlay, make over again to their
dwellings, where, with equal outlay, the old glory has been
laid low ; and the young men talked of their farms and their
oxen, of training-days and elections ; and the women of their
bedquilts and their butter, their new gowns and the village
news ; some of them of their babies.
All this was more than twenty years before.
Summer and winter went by, and spring came, tender-
footed, over the hills, and summer was near again. Something
else was near. Something that made the young wife happy
in the bright mornings, the brave morning-times when soul
and body wake together, strong for whatever may be to do or
to bear, and fearful with a tremble and a foreboding, when
the nights shut down and cut them off with gloom and silence
from the village two miles away. Nobody nearer than those
two miles, mother, doctor, or friend, whatever might
happen before daylight. Only a forest bridle and foot-path
between.
" It will all come right," said cheeiy George Devine.
And one glad, sweet, perfumy morning, it did come right.
George walked and ran the two miles in twenty minutes, got
to the village at " sun-up," and home again just as the golden
light fell full from over the mountain-top, like a promise, upon
his roof-tree ; the country doctor followed on Crab, with his
saddle-bags, close after ; and then the mother, never minding
the two miles afoot, with all her fifty years and growing,
comely weight. And into the small home cume the pain and
the peril and the joy that are the same in palace and cabin, and
A STOUT OF YESTERDAYS. 67
by equal chrism and crown make every woman, who so suffers
and receives, a queen.
They called the baby by a quaint old name in which their
exultation spoke itself, Rejoice. They never thought of
anything but joy in her from that day onward, when they
named her so. In their love and gladness, they arrogated
fate to their desire.
All that happy summer through of her young motherhood,
Persis did her small, neat house-keeping, with her baby in
the cradle or upon her arm ; but when summer came again,
George had to put a wooden slide across the door to shut the
little one in from all the great, dangerous worid, that began
for her from just outside that threshold ; for the tiny feet had
grown restless, and strong, and wilful; and the bit, bright face
looked over at him, and the wee hands clapped and beckoned
when he came up from his work, and out on the doorstone he
would stop, deferring his delight, to pick up spoon and rattle
and clothes-pin and string of buttons, and the half-dozen other
homely toys of which the busy mother had made temporary
beguilements and that the child had flung away ; and last of
all would gather up his child, with a strong rapture, and hold
her to his lips and heart. The old beautiful story of a baby-
hood, always, whatever comes of it afterward !
" By and by, when she can run and meet me ! " he
would say.
" By and by, when she can play on the flat rock, and set
out acorn-cups and bits of moss, and keep a little house, as I
did once ! "
" And when the farm grows, and I stay in the fields all daj',
and she can come and bring my dinner to me ! "
" She will have the 3~oung girls from the village, one of
these days, to walk in the pine woods? and get flowers and
berries, and come home to tea."
" She will have a sweetheart, maybe, to walk and talk there
with her, as I walked and talked with you."
Persis would stop there ; the mother does not go beyond
this, with her " by and by."
68 HITHERTO :
And as yet the child was just their little, bright Rejoice ;
and the future was all hid.
Ten or twelve years went by ; and there was no other little
one ; indeed, the mother said that this was well. They called
her Joyce, now ; names get shortened so ; and somehow they
grew sad when they remembered how they had first christened
her.
She gave them trouble ; they no longer said " by and by."
The father looked in the mother's anxious face when he came
in, to read what new pain the wilful, wayward little girl had
given ; and they lay awake and talked at nights of what they
should do to rule and win her. For she was of a strange tem-
per, that would neither be ruled nor won ; passionate, discon-
tented,' headstrong ; heedless of duty and of love ; bent only
upon selfish end and pleasure. She opened great, saucy eyes
when her father reasoned, or her mother pleaded ; she defied
restriction, bore punishment doggedly, and reiterated offence.
Idle and wild, she gathered about her, instead of the
sweet young companionship her mother had pictured, the
truants and the ne'er-do-weels of the village ; she would escape
and be off with them whole long mornings. Persis Devine's
heart ached when she thought, now, of the by and by. God's
by and by is long ; that is the only comfort.
At fourteen, Joyce ran away, with a girl four years her
elder. Bewitched with stories of factory life, tired of her
quiet home, she made up a bundle of her clothes, took a little
money, and went off, down to where mills were building and
cotton spinning, on the Merrimac. George Devine went after
her, and brought her back. It was only a fruitless, ill-con-
ceived, child's attempt ; but it half broke the hearts- that had
so built upon her.
In the midst of all*this trouble, came to them a strange
late gift another little one. Pure, and sweet, and lovely,
as the first had been ; to grow, perhaps, God knew whether,
into another pain for them.
" He could not let it be so, " the poor mother said ; and
trembling inwardly, pleading and praying, assuming nothing,
now, she called it Hope.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 69
When Hope was three years old, the father died.
Then Joyce could not be restrained. She must earn money
now, she said ;" and indeed there was need of it ; so she went
down to the mills. She cried when she said good-by at last,
holding her little sister in her arms. The one tenderness in
her nature had awakened for her. In these three years she
had seemed to soften somewhat, and at times to be even steady
and thoughtful ; there was a chance yet, Pei'sis thought ; so
with good, motherly counsel, and kisses and prayers, she let
her go.
From the mills, Joyce went to the great city beyond ; to
learn a trade, she said, and make her fortune. She came
home now and then, wearing fine clothes ; a bonnet with
French flowers ; a silk dress and an embroidered shawl ; and
she gave her mother money. She would have Hope with her,
by and by, she said ; she petted the child, and brought her
pretty keepsakes.
When Hope was seven the neighbors sent for Joyce ; the
mother was ill of a fever ; Joyce hardly got there for the end.
And then the two were orphans.
The neighbors could not interfere ; but they hardly liked
the look of the thing, when Joyce took Hope and went away.
Something coarser in the girl's face ; something meaner
even in the dress, mixed yet with a tawdry smartness, as she
had come among them (she had put on a black bonnet, and
a black shawl and gown of her mother's now, to go back in),
indicated, even to these unsophisticated country-folk, a step
downward, somehow ; they were " afraid she wasn't making
out so terrible well, after all."
And then there came a gap which it needs not to fill up ; a
changing and wandering of these two, from place to place,
still hand in hand ; for, erring and unfit as she was, Joyce
loved the child, and Hope was innocent and trusting.
Joyce's face grew coarse; she was "queer "and ill, now
and then ; when these times came, Hope just stayed by and
waited.
" Whiles" as the Scotch say, they would go together into
service ; Joyce was capable, and would work well for a space ;
70 HITHERTO :
and Hope was bright and quick for errands and small
chores.
Then they would live in some bit of a room together,
" house-keeping," Joyce getting work at her trade, in a shop ;
they had strange neighbors and strange company, often, and
Joyce went and came at extraordinary hours ; but she was
kind and loving to the little sister, careful of her, in a cer-
tain fashion, amid all her recklessness ; that and her young
childhood and her simpleness, and some peculiar inherent
quality of her own little life, hard to define, only possible now
and then, in a heaven-sunned nature like hers to discern, saved
Hope. She was like a pure little blossom that lifts its deli-
cate head sometimes, out of a handful of sweet, natural earth,
kept by some blind love or instinct in the midst of grimness
and foulness, and all that shrouds and shuts out nature.
That does not tell it either. A shaft of divine light ran
athwai't and through this child's spiritual being, that lit up
itself and the air about it ; that even illumined the motes there-
in that were really of the dust and refuse, and turned them
into starry sparkles. She made her own little bright spot
at once ; she made friends who turned toward her the side that
was capable of ripening to any sweetness, even among the
very castaways with whom her wretched outer living brought
her in innocent and unsuspicious contact. She was never
frightened, never lonely ; she sang little nursery songs to her-
self by hours, when Joyce left her ; when a change came, as
always did come to whatever temporary plan or abiding they
might make, thi'ough a fit of temper, or a whim, or the
" queerness " on the one hand, or an impulse to better things,
as it might be, on the other, with poor Joyce, she set off
blithe and trusting again ; always looking for the good that
they were surely going to ; seeking the fortune that infallibly
lay beyond.
She told Joyce stories, in her cunning little way ; half of
memory, half of her own sweet, childish fancy, about sisters
like them who went out into the wide world and came to
wonderful luck. She mixed up the little she had been taught
about God's providence with this ; and it was " the good God "
A STORT OF YESTERDAYS. 71
who was to bring them out of. every perplexity and lead them
to the beautiful end. This force of an opposite drawing it was
that persuaded Joyce's vibrating life to its better extreme ;
that attracted her to a quiet and respectable living ; that
brought her sometimes, and so Hope, into a purer atmos-
phere. Out of this Hope gathered, by angelic assimilation, the
good and the brightness and the fragmeutaiy truth which she
carried into the darker alternations ; as if the day might
treasure up and secrete particles of its sunlight against the
turning away toward the sunless void.
She asked her sister once what her name meant. She
understood her own and it was beautiful. " Joyce " must
mean something.
" I lost the beginning of my name, long ago," Joyce an-
swered bitterly. " When I was little, they called me Rejoice.
It will never be put together again. Never call me so ! " she
added, with an almost angry impetuosity.
" God could put it together," said Hope, confidently. " I
shall call you ' Re/ to save the two halves, and keep Him in
mind."
So, after that, she always did.
But poor Joyce's name and life were alike in two distracted
halves. And for two years more it went on so, till Hope was
nine. Then they had been in the farthest gloom for
months the end came.
A pitiful sight in a city street one day, far off, as they
measured distance then, from the scene of Joyce Devine's firsi
venture after fortune, gathered a gradual crowd.
A wornam sitting on the damp sidewalk, leaning back in a
sheltering angle of the brick wall ; a pale, distorted face, that
ought to have been young, but that never would be young
again ; swollen, changed, from what it must have been a little
wkile ago, stupid, senseless ; the eyes half shut, the jaw
falling ; an old bonnet crushed down upon the forehead ; a
thin, torn, dirty calico gown, and a miserable shawl that hid
and helped nothing ; feet thrust out, unsightly, in broken and
down-trodden shoes. Beside this, a little girl standing wait-
ing. No surprise, no perplexity even, in her face ; only a
72 HITHERTO:
patient look that was hardly sad, rather sure and expectant,
though a little weary, a something through the patience
which said it would be better with them soon, she had only
to wait.
She moved before the other a little, when people came by,
and glanced and lingered ; she drew the old shawl over her sis-
ter's bosom when the wind, or some half-conscious motion,
stirred it; she said, "It was no matter, Joyce was queer
like that sometimes," when any one questioned ; but all the
while Joyce grew strangely queerer.
There was no omnipresent police in those days ; a good
many persons, one after another, half paused, and then went
on, none of them being that " somebody " who is always to
take care, at last, of that which does not eventually take care
of itself; but presently they would no longer go by; they
stopped and gathered ; they said the constable must be sent
for, and she must be carried somewhere.
" Please let her be," Hope said ; " she will be better by
and by, and we will go home."
She stood with her hand on Joyce's shoulder ; the other
arm held across her breast, keeping the old shawl on ; some-
how no one liked to meddle forcibly, or take the child away ;
there was an impalpable shield of privacy about her as she
stood there in her patient trouble in the open street, as if
close walls and shuttered windows had covered her in ; she
looked so surprised that any should persistently intrude ; it
was her business, and she knew so Avell.
But Joyce grew queerer paler ; the slight occasional move-
ments ceased ; there was no longer the expiration of slow,
audible breath ; she lay very still, and the head fell further
forward.
A man just come up, pressed through the crowd, and got a
single look ; then he laid his hand upon her bonnet and lifted
it away.
" Let her be," said Hope, reiterating her old words in a tired
waj r ; " she will be better, soon."
" She is better," said the man. " She is just dead."
Hope looked at him as if she could not comprehend either
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 73
the fact, or how lie dared to utter it. " Dead?" she repeated,
as if she spoke after him a word in some strange language.
" She is dead ; of heart disease and inebriation."
He was a doctor, and he could read the signs ; but he looked
in that child's pure, amazed face, and he could not use a harsher,
commoner word.
This then was the end of it all ; of the young wife's fears
and gladness ; of the home-building and the looking-for, the
pain, and the joy, and the pride ; of the sister-love, and the
fortune-seeking together. This was the whole history and
out-come of it.
Was it?
There is never an end ; it is always a going on ; and God's
mercy is beyond, always. In the infinitude of that, Joj^ce may
have found, somewhere, before now, the old, lost syllable of her
name.
Meanwhile, there was at that moment only this, the seem-
ing end : the dead girl in the streets ; the gathering crowd ;
the doctor ; presently the coroner, the bearing away, the in-
quest ; and little Hope left alone in the world.
74 HITHERTO :
CHAPTER VII.
ONE OF THESE DATS.
THERE were two places in the city, to one of which Hope
would have to be taken, the almshouse, or a more special
charity, the Female House of Industry, and Asylum for the
Indigent. It was to this latter, and to the former division of
it, that she was brought.
They put on her a dark blue gown and a brown linen apron,
and merged her in the routine and duty of the establishment.
They told her God had taken her sister, and that this was to
be her home. They were kind to her ; I have no tale of hor-
rors to relate. Only it was routine and rule, and keeping to
hours and work.
She grieved, in a tender way, for Joyce ; but she had great
faith, in her small, unlearned fashion. God had taken her ;
she gave her up to him. She could wait ; she had waited a
great many times before. God would take her, sometime, too.
There was a school for the children in this House of Indus-
try ; three hours for simple lessons in reading, writing, and
numbers ; some of the oldest ones studied Geography. After
that, they did, in different departments, various small,
tedious work ; all sameness of work is tedious to children.
They picked hair for mattresses, which the women made over
or made up ; they sewed patchwork for quilts ; they hemmed
towels ; they braided mats ; they went into the laundry and
learned to do ruffles on ruffling irons, or they turned crimping
machines. They had half hours, at different times in the day,
for play.
Next door to the asylum was a building in which was also
a children's school ; the yard in which these children played
was divided by a high fence from the other. From the win-
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 75
dows in the passages above, the little charity-folks in their
straight blue gowns and Holland aprons, could leok over upon
these groups of little ones who came from homes ; who had an
individuality, and wore, some of them dresses of blue, some
of pink, some .of green or white.
Hope watched their games and caught the clue to them ;
then she and her companions repeated them in the asylum
yard. Children's pleasures are made up of a thousand little
imaginations and interpretings that are incomprehensible to
their elders, except as they look back on their own childhood ;
and this some of us have either not the power to do, or have
lost the habit. There is such a thing as a genius for retrospec-
tion. If it were not for such intangible and perhaps absurd
imaginings and associations, where would be the charm of
nine-tenths of the children's games? They are types and
suggestions to them of great, unconscious meanings. In the
after years we unravel some of these which were vaguely
beautiful in their time, if so be, indeed, we have that retro-
spective genius which 'can call them up in their vividness, and
the insight that can analyze.
They played at " Bookbinder ; " where the sport consisted in
successive trials of watchfulness and agility, by the placing of
a book upon the closed and joined fists, manipulating about it
with touches and approaches and feints of lifting, the end of
which was, if it could be accomplished, a smart rap upon the
knuckles too slow in withdrawing, or the fall of the book to
the ground', which was just as bad. Between this little Scylla
and Charybdis each child watched and waited eagerly, with
alert, sparkling eyes ; every failure sent the defeated one
down to the foot of the line ; she who held her place at the
head for three rounds became Bookbinder.
There was great glee in the asylum yard the day this new
game, borrowed from their neighbors, was inaugurated.
Hope showed them how it was done, as usual ; they played
with a small square bit of smooth board, left by some carpen-
ter, and treasured up as a plaything ; they could not carry
books away from the school-room. It was a grand excitement ;
fun, they knew not why ; the truth was that to their child-ua-
76 HITHERTO :
tures and ambitions it was all that the most earnest strivings
are to men and women ; when life tries them with its ticklish
opportunities ; when they watch and balance, and, seizing the
right moment, may, by vigilance and quickness, succeed ; or
too fearful, or too slow, may let fall everything, or get their
knuckles rapped, and go down, disappointed, to the foot. If
they can go up and stay up, after a while they begin to dis-
pense chances and hold fates for others. It is only a bigger
game that goes round so ; we are just like the children ; by
our games, also, we are training faculties for the grasp of
things yet more large and real, that we shall come to by and
fcy-
Then there was one other chief amusement. In these
bricked yards were wide borders, marked off by planks set
edgewise, holding garden earth, in which grew shrubs and
common flowers. The children tried in turn walking this nar-
row plank-edge from end to end. According to the distances
they achieved without a slipping, they would rank themselves,
keeping their place and number from day to day. There were
differences in these wooden curbs ; some were inch-wide only,
some gave double that for foothold ; so they had classes
higher and lower ; being promoted from the head of one to the
foot of another. What was this like but moral and intellec-
tual mounting ? What was it more like than some holy Para-
ble or Promise, even, of narrow ways that lead to higher
life, of small work well done, after which shall be given
greater ? We live in allegory ; the very children in the mar-
ket-place utter the truth hidden away in them ; they believe
they are at play only ; but they can only play after the great
human nature and expectation that lie latent and must urge
outward.
So it does not take much, after all, of implement and form to
make a life ; an alphabet holds a whole language, and all the
books of it ; so there was not very much difference between
the little girls in their blue gowns and the children in coats of
many colors ; not much contrast between the going in to cat
beans or porridge and unbuttered bread, or home to roasted
chicken, so that all was good of its kind, and they all got
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 77
enough of it ; not much contrast between the patchwork-
sewing in the matron's room, and the small stints in the
nursery. By and up out of it all, came the little souls into
some larger hope and knowledge ; some faint signifying to
themselves of things we all grope after but dimty. It is the
great facts of our living, and not the signs of it, that matter ;
we may solve mathematical problems with chalk and a board ;
a poor woman may strive up toward order and beauty in her
plain home, with only tin pans and rag-carpets to work with,
instead of statuary and velvet ; a small seller of tapes and
buttons may learn the laws of demand and supply in a
village which widen to the grand Economy of a Universe ;
we shall find out some time what we really have been study-
ing, and we may come out more equal than we think.
Out of their few books, in like manner, these charit} r -chil-
dren made as much, perhaps, as they could have done from
profounder ones and more ; what was not there they put in ;
this is what we all have to do. They learned to read and
spell from the old lesson-books which told them things like
these : " I am the sun. I am very bright. I rise every
morning, and give light and heat to the world. I make the
grass grow and the flowers bloom. If it were not for me, all
things would die." " I am the moon. My face is round. I
shine at night when the sun is gone. You cannot look at the
sun because he is too bright, but you can look at me, for my
light is mild." Here and there a story, of a disobedient
rabbit who went into the field which his mother had forbidden
him, thinking to eat fine parsle} r , but got poisonous hemlock
instead ; or an Esop's Fable ; or some simple rhymes. These
were to them the sublimity and fulness of description, (they
brought the things themselves to their thought, and what can
sublimity and fulness do more?) they were romance and
tragedy, eclogue and epic. In these books they passed by
nothing ; not even the homely scrolls and devices which
divided the sections and subjects ; they made them over on
their slates ; a line a curve was a whole picture ; every-
thing meant something, only they could have scarcely told
wrhaf if ia tl-iaf. irrvn roar} in
78 HITHERTO :
the swell of a hill against the horizon, or the bend of a
shore.
Hope read in " Barbauld's Lessons ; " that is all Addison and
Waverley for a child, as " Mother Goose" is Shakespeare.
She soon got out of that as a lesson-book, and she could enter,
in her way, into far lai'ger things when she got hold of them ;
simplicity and scope go strangely together, with the young.
She did not stagger at "Paradise Lost," you shall hear,
presently, how she came by that, but she never tired of the
story of Charles, and his morning walk down the fields, and
his stepping on board a vessel, in a truly spiritual way, with-
out premeditation or encumberment, and sailing over to
France, and just strolling down through that country. France
was only next door ; one could put on one's cape bonnet and
drop in there. One place opened to another, in that way, to
her fancy ; everything was next door ; the world was large,
but you could go on and on ; all ways led somewhere, and
there was no knowing what pleasantness you might come to.
She had a basket or a bundle of clean linen, done in the
laundry, to carry home sometimes ; the trustiest children did
the errands of the house. Hope always found the place, and
she was not gone too long ; yet she chose her ways of going,
for all that.
The fine streets were near the river ; it was in this direction,
and up the town, that she was ordinarily sent ; so she could come
a long way homeward, often, following the water-side. She
delighted in making out new turns ; it was like going journeys
to traverse different squares, or take a new cross-street, and
come out at fresh points. But the water was the unfailing
charm ; something came to her, when she caught its spai'kle,
of the old dim pictures of her infancy when she lived in
the little forest home. There was the wonder of whence
it came and where it was going ; where the vessels went that
she saw sail up and down ; which was France, and which
New Hampshire, for she had not regularly begun Geography
yet, and the most she knew was by Barbauld and tradition.
There were wide openings between the scattered buildings
on that side and the blue river-edge ; over across were long,
A STORY OF YESTJ5KDAYS. 79
green, sloping bills. At one place, from a broad wooden
wharf a little ferry-boat plied to and fro; she wanted so to
get in and go over in it, and climb up on the opposite shore
to the crest of tke high land, and see what there was bej'ond.
She would run all the way to do her errand and to get back
here, that she might have a little while to linger. One day
she had leave for Barbara Graice to go with her. The scrupu-
lous division of labor in this establishment seldom permitted
two to be sent upon one errand. But Barbara ought to learn
the way about ; Hope could not always go ; also Hope was
a good and trustworthy child, and deserved an indulgence.
So the matron said yes ; and hand in hand, as happy as two
little royal highnesses, the two little pauper-orphans set forth
together.
Hope liked Barbara because she was quiet, and would lis-
ten ; and Hope always had so much to tell ! They read sto-
ries together in their play-hours sometimes ; stories that Bar-
bara Graice would never have sat down to read by herself,
she would rather have played at tag, the good of which was
more apparent ; but with Hope's elocution and commentaries
and enlargements they became enchanting.
Some good soul among the Lady Managers had given the
blue-gowned children a year's volume of the " Juvenile Miscel-
lany." Very good girls were allowed to take it of a Saturday
afternoon. Hope worked grandly at her small, tedious tasks,
and earned the reward often ; sometimes for an extra half
hour that was not on a Saturday. Then she would find Bar-
bara, and go and sit with her at the staircase window that
overlooked the school-yard next door, and was crossed diago-
nally by the ascending steps, so that you had seat, and table,
and footstool, if you wanted them, all at once, and the pleas-
ant out-look besides.
They had in this volume the exciting history of " Catherine
Bennet ; or, The Week's Probation." Also, " Susans' Visit to
the Country : " how Catharine lost and kept her temper, and
what befell and tempted her from day to clay ; how she did not
go to the party, but did go at last, to stay at her aunt's instead,
where there was a " lawn" whatever that was, and a pond ;
80 HITHERTO :
how Susan travelled in the stage-coach, and fed the chickens,
and went to church, and carried a green parasol ; these sug-
gested worlds for the imagination to revel in ; and Hope
could tell Barbara Graice a score of things more than were put
down in the book.
" Catharine had brown, curly hair, like that pretty girl that
comes to the school to fetch her little sister ; and she wore a
dark-red gown like hers, and a white ruffle in her neck ; and
there was one little chicken at Susan's grandmother's that
had a speckled breast and a white tail."
" How do you know? " says Barbara.
" Why, I just think hard, and then I see 'em. Shut your
eyes and try."
Then Barbara would shut her eyes, and see exactly noth-
ing.
" I'll ask Miss Hammond to let you go up to Tower Street
with me to-morrow, with Mrs. Jameson's basket, and coming
home I'll show you the country."
" Shall I have to shut my eyes ? Because I can't see any-
thing so, and I don't see how you do it."
" No. It's outside, and close by, almost. The other things
are inside, you know, and a great way off, somehow."
This was the way that it came about, and that they walked
up to Tower Street hand to hand, and came back along the
river.
It was a bright day, and the light sparkled on the little blue
tips of the waves, and behind the green hills opposite, and
overhead the sky was deep, and clear, and splendid.
" TJiat's the country," says Hope, in a magnificent way, as
if she were showing some grand domain of her own, or a con-
tinent that she had discovered, " the real country."
"Where Susan went?"
" Yes, only she went up a long road behind those hills, that
leads away oif, up and down, and over bridges, and past fields
and ponds, and through dark woods, till at last 3-011 come to
it, a great white house with a green fence before it, and a
swing in the garden ; and Susan's grandmother has got a rose-
bush in the window."
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 81
" You never told me that before."
" I just noticed it," says Hope. " You can't see everything
at once. There's ever so much more there, and in other places.
Barbara ! " she began again, suddenly, after a pause, " there's
a story about us, too, somewhere."
"O Hope! that's an awful jiggermaree ! " She wouldn't
say "fib" to Hope.
" No, it aint. Maybe it isn't put in a book yet ; but there
is a story ; and somebody can shut up their eyes, somewhere,
and see it, I know ! "
" Stories aint true things. Miss Hammond says so. And
when you shut your e} 7 es you aint really there ! "
" You can't see anything that isn't," says Hope, positively.
" And whatever there is, somebody will see. Up in heaven,
at any rate."
" I'd lieveser they wouldn't be shutting their eyes and peek-
ing at me. And I don't believe it. It's only a pretend."
" You can't pretend what there isn't" Hope persisted.
A schooner, with sails white in the sunlight, came floating
up before the gentle, steady breeze from the south, just out-
side the edge of the swift, downward river current, closer and
closer, till they could hear the captain's voice, ordering his
crew of three men and a boy, and the rattle of the ropes, and
the flap of the canvas, as they began to shorten sail and wear
in toward the shore.
Right toward the wharf-head upon which they stood, she
came. This had never happened before when Hope had been
here. She was quite awed to see it. That a vessel, straight
from she knew not where, France, perhaps, as likely as not,
and going, by and by, ma} r be, up where the water first
gleamed in sight under a distant hill-foot, and still up, into
the forests and past the towns, like one of her own dreams, that
started from what she knew, and drifted far into the beautiful
and rich unseen out of which all knowledges came, it made
her catch her breath, and hold Barbara's hand hard, and look
with great eyes filled with wonder.
Somebody, whose business it was, seeing the craft approach,
ran down the wharf, and warned the children out of the way ;
6
82 . HITHERTO :
a great rope was flung from the vessel's bow and fell upon the
pier ; this man caught it, passed it quickly round an oak post
that stood there, solid and shiny, and made it fast. The men
on board took hold, and began to warp in ; and presently the
hills opposite were cut up into little separate pictures between
the masts and yards and the great, wrinkled rolls of sails
furled up to these, and the slender tips of the topmost spars
made delicate lines above the highest swell of the green land,
against the deep, clear blue.
Only two idle children, who had no business there, hanging
round to watch a river-schooner come up to her mooring-place ;
but one of these, at least, was getting glimmerings of strange,
untold intuitions that had to do with the great intercourse be-
tween far lands ; with all swift, sure, and beautiful messenger-
ings ; dimly and unaware, with a communing yet more mysti-
cal and interior ; a reaching through some medium rarer than
fluent wave or viewless air, breathing of real, white-pinioned
thoughts, driven of the heavenly forces back and forth, mak-
ing the joyful commerce of the spheres. Some eyes are so
anointed from the birth ; anointed to the gradual seeing ; men
as trees walking, at the first ; but the feeling of some full,
possible vision is upon them ; hints of what all things show
make all things wonderful. A little charity-girl in a blue
gown ; ignorant ; all the toil of the world's mechanism of
learning before her ; but a soul, nevertheless, touched with a
spark of God's own light, by which she caught continually
that which lies behind all words.
A woman and a little child were on the deck ; they came up
out of the cabin just as the rope was flung ; the child's face
was rosy and shining from fresh soap-and-water, and her hair
was damp, and curled up round her temples where the comb
had been drawn through. The woman had put on her shawl
and bonnet, they were the captain's wife and little daughter,
presently they were going ashore.
"Oh, see!" said Hope. "Shehas come in the vessel!
She belongs there ! "
A plank had been thrown from the vessel's side to the wharf,
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 83
and up this the captain, a young, brown, hearty fellow, canie
springing, as Hope spoke.
The little child, with the damp, curling hair, had taught him
to be " noticing of children," as his wife said ; and when he
saw Hope's eager face, he paused.
"You'd like to go on board, maybe?" he said, kindly.
" Antoinette ! I shan't be ready for ten minutes to go down
town with you. See to these little folks, will you, if they
want to look about ! "
Hope wondered, at first, if he could be speaking to his ves-
sel ; for she had spelled out "Antoinette" upon her bows.
But it was his wife, for whom his vessel was named ; and she
was already smiling, and the captain's hand was held out to
Hope to help her down the plank if she would go. " You
needn't be afraid," he said.
But it was something else that hindered honest Hope.
" I thank 3 r ou, sir, but I guess I oughtn't," she replied.
" It's time for me to go back now, and I've been trusted to
take Barbara Graice."
" I guess you always will be trusted," cried John Drake, the
captain, looking into her straight, clear eyes. " "Where do
you live? "
"House of Industry, and Asylum for the Indigent," re-
peated Hope. " I aint the Indigent ; that's the old ladies. I
go errands. That's how I came here."
" Maybe j'ou'll go an errand again this wa}'. Antoinette
and I will be here till to-morrow night." She did not know
now, whether he meant Mrs. Drake, or the schooner, and it
seemed to make very little difference.
" I'll ask leave," said Hope. " I don't suppose I ought,
without." And so, with her head over her shoulder, with a
longing, backward look, but a great determination in all the
rest of her, she took Barbara Graice by the hand and turned
away ; walking fast up the wharf, and breaking to a run when
she had turned the corner upon the street.
"That was pretty hard," she said, checking her speed, and
drawing a long breath, when they had run two or three
squares.
84 HITHERTO:
"What?" said Barbara.
" Coming away. If he'd coaxed me a little bit, I'm afraid
I shouldn't."
" Coaxed? To go down that steep plank, over the water?
J -wouldn't have gone for a fourpence ! "
Hope was half glad to hear that. To-morrow, if there was
a basket, and Barbara wouldn't want to come too, she might
get leave.
She made three squares of patchwork that afternoon, and
when she carried them to Miss Hammond she presented her
request.
Miss Hammond was dubious.
Hope lifted her clear eyes up at her ; golden-brown eyes she
had, almost translucent in their sunshiny color ; it was like
looking into a forest brook where it comes out from under the
shadow into pure day, to read them.
" I'll be proper careful," she said ; " and I won't stay long.
There was a kind lady, the captain's wife, and his little girl ;
O Miss Hammond, please ! He told her to see to me."
Miss Hammond knew that, if she chose, the child might
have done the thing without the asking. She reasoned from
this truth, that it must all be as she said. She knew the
place ; it was above the busy wharves where the rush of city
trade came in ; it was one of those up-river schooners that
picked up their freight from place to place as they came down,
and discharged their return lading in liko manner. She was
wise, and trusted Hope.
" After school, at eleven o'clock, you can carry a basket up
to Mrs. Gilspey's. .And I'll give you till the clock strikes
twelve. When you hear that, you must start for home. And
you needn't sa} T anything about it either, among the other
children," she added.
" I will, ma'am, certain true. And I won't ; not a single,
identical word."
Hope plumed herself upon no favor or importance ; she
simply saw, as Miss Hammond herself did, that it would
hardly do to make a precedent ; not that she ever heard the
word ; but, as has been said, she was quick at seeing things.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 85
Words are made after these. She knew them when she came
to them, by an instinct. They fitted exactly to something she
had already got.
The next day, when she reached the pier, Antoinette was
there and " Theress," the child, but John Drake had gone into
the town to attend to his business. Antoinette came up the
gang-plank to meet the little visitor and help her on board ;
Theress jumped up and down upon the deck, and clapped her
hands to see her coming. They told each other their names
first, Hope and Theress, that was the way they pro-
nounced this last, and then they went all over the vessel.
Theress showed Hope the little blue chest, a real sailor's
chest, which was her own, and in which she kept all her
clothes ; this had a till inside which held her especial treas-
ures, a paper-box, with cotton- wool, on which lay a bit of
cut purple glass, and a few dozen little scarlet guinea-peas
with black eyes ; little miracles of beauty they seemed to
Hope, and when Theress gave her four of them for her own,
it was as if the Queen of England' had sent her the Koh-
i-noor ; there would have been room for no higher ecstasy
or gratitude in her at that. Also, there was in a tiny blue
hat-box a real little black beaver hat, about two inches high,
made by Theress' cousin, who was a journe3 : man hatter in
New York.
" Do you live here all the time ? " asked Hope.
"All the summer-times," said Theress. "We don't keep
house ; we keep schooner. It's cheaper living ; and it's real
fun," she went on, blending the quoted pleasantry and pru-
dence of her elders with her own little jolly originalities. " In
the winters we stay at grandma's, way up to Grindon."
" Oh, what is up the river, please ? " cried Hope, reminded
by that, and turning round to Mrs. Drake for fuller answer
than Theress could give.
" Farms and towns ; each way, with bridges across ; woods
sometimes where you sail along at night in still, shady water,
with the bushes bending down over the banks, and great trees
filling up all the sky except a little river full of stars," said
Antoinette Drake, talking unconscious poetry in her simple
86 HITHERTO:
way. Because, you see, she lived in the midst of it, and
breathed it in ; she could give forth nothing else, answering
a question like that. It was matter of fact to her. You
might have found her common and practical enough, try her
at other points ; her cookery, for example, or her gowns, or her
visits ashore in the great towns ; utterly so at an abstract
thought, perhaps.
"And people?" went on Hope.
"Oh, yes ; people, of course ; people everywhere, except
in the woods."
" It's queer," said Hope, meditatively.
"What?" asked Mrs. Drake. "Queer that there should
be people ? If there warn't, what should we go up and down
for?"
" It's queer that they should be there, and I should be here.
And if I was there, that would be here."
" To-morrow'll be to-day, when it comes," said Antoinette,
as if she had cheapened one wonder by bringing forward
another. ^
" Does this river rise in the mountains? " queried Hope, re-
membering the geography lessons she had caught scraps of in
school.
" Yes, and comes down through them. But the schooner
can't go up there."
" How does it rise ? " Hope had dim idea, perhaps, of some
grand apparitional birth, in full grandeur, of flood and mist,
out of awful recesses.
" Oh, it just begins, that's all. As likely as not you could
put the first of it into a waterpail or a pint bowl ; only it
keeps coming."
"That's a great ' only,' isn't it? It seems to me every-
thing is ' only.' I mightn't be anywhere in the world ; that
seems so funny sometimes ; only God did make me. God
mightn't have been, either ; and then there wouldn't have
been anything at all. Only he is."
" I guess you're an odd little stick," said Mrs. Drake.
" How should you like to go up river, yourself? " she asked
Hope, presently.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 87
" I'm going, some time. I've just made up my mind."
" You're one of the sort that can't be got ahead of. I'd
like John to come back and talk to you a spell."
John did come before she went. He showed her other
things, that she had not seen, the wheel, and how it moved
the rudder, and how that steered the vessel ; a long chart
picture, she called it of the river, with the channels and
rocks and islands and landings, all marked out, and the names
of the towns on the shores.
"Mr. Captain," she said to him, very seriously, after they
had come to easy friendliness over this, " if ever you see any
people up the river that would like to have a little girl come
to live with them, will 3-011 tell 'em to come to the asylum and
get me? Folks take girls so, and Miss Hammond says I'm to
be bound out, or adopted, or something, soon. You see I'd
like it to be vp the river, because there it grows green and
pleasant ; down, there are the dirty wharves and streets, and
then they say you come out to where it's all water ; and then,
perhaps, I'd have to go to France. I'd rather go up toward
the mountains ! "
" Do you know anything about mountains ? "
" Yes ; I remember I used to live there, a great many years
ago.
Just four it was ; Hope was eleven, now ; but a strange
dimness of antiquity had gathered over that small past of hers,
out of which an older perception would apprehend that she
had but barety come.
John Drake smiled.
" She's a little old-fashioned thing, as ever you see," said
Antoinette, by way of helping him, wife-fashion, to recognize
that which was before his eyes, but which had happened to
come first before her own.
" She's smart and knowing too," she added. " If anybody
did want a girl to bring up I guess I'll mention it in
Grindon."
" I don't think that place sounds pretty," said Hope.
" Here's one that does," she went on, returning to the ex-
amination of the chart, " ' Broadfields.' That seems large,
88 HITHERTO .'
and green, and sunshiny. I'd like to go there. I wish you'd
mention me in Bfoadfields," she added, very gravely.
" I guess I will," said John Drake. "You've pitched on
the very picture of a place for prettiness, of all that's on the
river. And likeliness, too, for that matter," he added. " Now
supposing you see if you can eat a big apple." And he
pulled out of his coat-pocket, turning it inside out as he did
so, with the bulk of the fruit and his own fist grasping it, an
enormous red apple ; red all over, shining and dazzling ; red
half through, he told her, " see if it wasn't."
" I've got another in my other pocket for Theress," he said,
as he perceived her hesitate.
" I thought something smelt apple-y," said Hope, quite ex-
cited, and coloring up with gratitude. " Just like Mrs. Gils-
pey's back garden. Thank you, sir. I'll give a piece to
Barbara Graice, and one to old Mrs. Whistler. She's one of
the Indigents. There'll be ever so many pieces." There
always were ever so many pieces in any pleasure that came to
Hope.
Just at that instant, the great church clock in Tower Street
began its stroke of twelve.
" There ! I've got to go back now, straight away," she said,
jumping up, prompt as Cinderella at her first ball. " But I
don't care ! I've had such a good time ! "
John Drake helped her up the plank. " I'll bear it in mind
about Broadfields," he said. "I shall be at New Oxford to-
morrow. That's the end of my run ; schooners don't go
higher than that. Broadfields is the next place. There's
mostly folks down, and I know some of 'em. I shouldn't
much wonder if you got a chance, some time ; not right off,
this trip, perhaps."
" Oh, no," said Hope. " I don't ever have things right off,
hardly. One of these days." She promised herself, as other
people promised her.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS.
CHAPTER VIII.
HARM'S PROVIDEXCE.
HOPE took her patchwork, and went up into the Old Ladies'
Room. She had her piece of apple, also, to carry to Mrs.
Whistler ; she had kept it all, untouched, for three days, till
Saturday afternoon came ; and she had the whole story of the
schooner, and the river-picture, and Antoinette and Theress,
and the blue chest, and the kind, hearty captain himself, to
tell to her old friend.
It was a long room, with six windows in it ; three at each
end ; two large chambers and two little dressing-rooms had
been thrown into one apartment, taking the whole third story
of the house. The floor was bare, scrubbed white ; there
were strips of carpet laid down beside the beds, which were
single, all alike, ranged with their heads against the wall on
either side the fireplace ; one also in each square recess
formed by the taking in of the little dressing-rooms just
mentioned, which had been at the ends of the passage.
These recesses were the desirable places, the corner lots ;
having a window and some extra space, and the advantage of
comparative retirement ; next to these were held in high con-
sideration the cots precisely opposite, with a window in each
narrow passage alongside, the special franchise of their oc-
cupants ; the places by the fire ranked third, in winter per-
haps took precedence. The four who lodged between floated
about ; considered the middle windows theirs of right, but
went visiting, especially in the square before the fire in
fire-times ; the coterie here, indeed, of a frozen winter's day,
became a grand assembly.
These old women had their etiquettes, their cliques, their
jealousies and rivalries, their real friendships. Some of them
90 HITHERTO :
had their visiting lists, also, of people outside ; friends of old
times who came to see them ; benefactresses who remembered
their wants and infirmities with little gifts ; each section of the
. room displayed in its comforts and small adornments, the re-
sources, in such wise, of its owner. Here came in one
rivalry, the constant and prevailing one ; another, was in the
number and severity of past misfortunes.
An old woman who could tell a tale of better days, when
her husband had sailed an India ship for rich owners, and she
had lived in a pretty two-story house in a sea-coast village,
" with carpets to all the floors, and white curtains to the win-
dows, and real china in the closet," of a terrible hurt he got
at sea, and being brought home on his back, a cripple for the
rest of his days, and of his "living along most mysteriously
by the will of God " till all their saved-up funds were spent ;
of a fire that came after he had died, and " neighbors had come
forrud and made up a purse, and the old owners had sent
down a hundred dollars, and she had just begun to get cleared
-up and settled down, and thinking of a little comfort taking
in a couple of boarders, and house and carpets and curtains
had been burnt up, and most of the china broke a-saving of
it ; " of going out nursing after that, and " living round
amongst pains and aches till she got so many of her own she
had to come here with 'em, and lay out to make the best she
could of 'em, and thank God "they was no wuss, and she'd got
the east corner where the sun came in o' mornings," she,
perhaps, carried the palm ; but it was disputed by another
who had lost her husband in early youth, out West, where
they had begun on a farm ; had had fever and ague, " till the
courage was nigh shook out of her ; " had got home again
somehow, to the East, and brought up her two children, a girl
and a boy ; the girl married a well-to-do country trader, and
then, " before s'ever they'd got into the new house he built, she
went and died ; " and the boy would learn a painter's trade,
" though she knew 'twas awful unwholesome, and nevh,wholly
give in to it ; and there ! three years ngo he died, of $ison on
the lungs, and she came here, and she'd got an inside-bed
and no rocking-chair, and was wore to death hearin' of Miss
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 91
Parcher's china." "You've had your bread and butter, some
of it," she would say, reproachfully to the shipmaster's widow,
when they strove in lamentation together ; " but mine alwers
slipped clean through my fingers, butter-side down ! "
Mrs. Whistler never joined in these comparisons of ill ; she
dwelt as it were in a silent consciousness of greatness, meek,
thankful soul as she truly was ! knowing that her long pain,
of cureless disease, had only to be named to swallow up, like
an Aaron's rod, all lesser plaints ; and when her nights and days
of sutferings came, as they would at intervals, when her
envied west corner, the best in all the room, was full of a low,
patient moan, these tellings and strivings hushed them-
selves about her, and her housemates would look over at her,
stealthily and pitifully, and lean their heads together and
whisper questionings of whether " she'd go this time," and after
a decent pause and with the preface of a sigh, would wonder
" who'd get the corner after her ; 'twould seem strange to see
another body there ; " and then a closing sigh would make
the sentence properly parenthetical.
Mrs. Whistler sat and sewed upon fine cambric ; she was
making, stitch by stitch, her cap and shroud ; but it might have
been a young girl busy at her wedding finery, for the cheer
there would be about her on her well days when she could so
work. Up over her head was a little book-case of two shelves ;
here she had some old, friendly volumes that had lived with
her through all that history of years that she never in its con-
tinuity related ; some, also, that a kindness of to-day had
placed there for their pleasant pictures and comfortable thoughts.
Hope read out of these aloud to her, sometimes ; sometimes
she had a book to carry away and read herself, by the stair-
case window ; this was how she came by " Paradise Lost."
She held up the great piece of apple, almost the half,
freshly cut, the red side out, toward Mrs. Whistler.
"That's for you to begin with," she said; and so she
pulled a little cricket, and sat down.
" Mann's Providence, again, dear," said the old woman.
" First a-waiting and a-vrnnting ; and then presently you know
why. It's just like the day my gruel got burnt, and then- Miss
92 HITHERTO:
Ainsworth came in with that elegant chicken broth. I've been
thirsty ever since my dinner, the soup was salt to-day,
and not a drink of water in the room, nor anybody hap-
pening in to go and fetch one. It was just that piece of apple
on the way and ray mouth a-making up for it."
Hope knew what "Harm's Providence" meant; she had
asked that question and been told about it long before.
" It was when we were little, at home, that it began," had
been the story. " My mother always set her faith on
Providence ; and father, he used to call her ' marm ; ' it was a
homely, old-fashioned, countiy way of calling, but it meant
the whole with him, wife, and heart's queen, and mainstay,
and head, and contriver, and everything that a woman could
be to a man, or to a house. I used to think he had Marm,
and Marm had Providence ; though he believed as firm as she
did in his heart, only he liked to lay it off on to her, as he
did everj'thing else. He gave her the credit, and let her go
ahead, and just eased things along for her. We had him, and
Marm, and Providence, all three ; it wasn't likely but we
would be well cared for. So, when airy thing looked a little
dubious, as if it mightn't work out well, or we couldn't see,
perhaps, how a thing was to be done that needed to be, he'd
say, ' Marm's Providence '11 see to that, I guess ; ' and it al-
ways did. After she died, he kept on saying it, and it kept
on coming true ; he said it with a different sound to it though ;
maybe it aint quite right, but I've thought it might have
been somehow so that Saint Paul used to say, ' the Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ.' I know better now what that means,
thinking of father's love, and mother's trustingness, and how
he depended on what she lived so sure by."
" Are you pretty well to-da}*- ? " asked Hope.
" Well, child, yes ; and satisfied. That's well. I shall live
just long enough. I did think I'd have been gone before this ;
but when you're certain, you needn't be in a hurry. ' Thank
the Lord for daily breath, but leap for joy at certain death,'
that's what I say to myself. The comfort and the rest are
pretty near. That's what the ache and the tiredness mean.
And they'll be according. When I think of that, it almost
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 93
makes me greedy of pain. It's God's note of hand, Hope.
Lay it up, against your time comes."
" And now, I've got a, story to tell," says Hope. Not
breaking in disregardfully ; she always listened Mrs. Whistler
through ; laying up, so, more treasure than she counted at the
moment, " against her time should come ; " but with childish
straightforwardness, she made no forced reply, took her turn
to speak, and spoke what was waiting in her.
" How your eyes shine, child ! " said the old lady. " Harm's
Providence has been doing something new for you ! "
"Where do you think that apple came from?" Hope asked,
her eyes sparkling yet more, in her impatience to tell all.
" Out of some orchard, where the sun shone on it, and it
grew and grew, and sweetened and sweetened, it didn't know
what for. No more do you."
" But last of all ? " pursued Hope. " You can't guess. I'll
tell you. It came up the river in a schooner ! At least, I
don't know ; but it came out of a man's pocket that had come
up the river in a schooner, and he was the captain of it. How
do you suppose I got it ? "
" Well, he met you on the wharf, and gave it to you? "
" Oh, you can't half guess ! " cried Hope, laughing out.
" It was a great deal better than that ! I was in the schooner
with him ; and Antoinette was there, and Theress ; they live
there, and go up and down ! They told me what was up the
river, and he showed rne a picture of it. There's woods, and
towns, and meadows, and hills ; and people everywhere.
Places, Mrs. Whistler, and chances. There's no knowing what
there might be up that river ! "
Hope made very determined pauses, now and then, and pulled
her needle through and through her patchwork seam diligently ;
it was needful, that her sewing might catch up with her talk.
Then she began again.
o o
" It goes so, in one place ; " and she laid a strip of calico
down upon her knee, and scored with her needle a winding mark
upon it. " It makes a great scallop, and in that scallop is
Broadfields. How does that sound ? What do you think of
tha't, for a place? With hills behind, and the river in front?
94 HITHERTO :
He told me so. And everything green and wide, and nothing
in the way of the sky ? "
"I think j^ou'd like to go there, sometime, wouldn't you?
Or to a place like it? I think your mouth's a-making up for it,
and I think 3^011'!! get it."
" Do you, truty, Mrs. Whistler ? " Hope's great eyes widened,
and their golden color was clear and beaming. " L told him
that I wished he'd mention me in Broadfields," she added, in her
quaint way, trying to speak very quietly and reasonably.
" And why, that's ail my story, every word of it ! I thought
I had ever so much to tell ! "
u You'll go." Mrs. Whistler looked at the child wishfully,
as she repeated this.
Hope's golden eyes suddenly clouded. " Oh, dear ! " she
cried, " I never thought. You won't have me to come and see
you, if I do. What will you have instead ? "
" Marm's Providence will take care of that," serenely quoted
Mrs. Whistler from the Family Creed.
It was a homely faith and a homely phrase ; but the soul of it
was as grand as that of the old Hebrew refrain, " The God
of Abraham and of Isaac, and of Jacob."
The half-hour bell rang below, and Hope folded up her small
work, and stuck her needle in. At that moment Miss Ham-
mond opened the Old Ladies' door.
" Hope ? Oh, you are here ? You're wanted, in the matron's
room."
" It's come the beginning of it," said Mrs. Whistler, softly
to herself. " And I think now, it'll be my turn pretty soon.
'Up the river with the hills behind; gi-een, and wide, and
nothing in the way of the sky.' ' The gates of it shall not be
shut by day, and there shall be no night there. The Lamb who
is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and lead them
unto living fountains of water. And there shall be no
more pain. And God shall wipe away all tears from their
eyes.' "
The old lady folded up her work also. There were but a few
stitches to be set. " Another day," she said, and stuck the
needle in.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 95
Another day, only a week later, somebody else finished the
last stitches.
Somebody else might have the west corner now.
Hope went sailing up the river. In the still of the sunset,
and the early beauty of the moon, through calm wood-shadow,
looking up into the " river of stars," out into meadow-broad-
enings where the perfect sphere of heaven arched over a perfect
plane of earth, she went, making a dream-voyage of delight.
She slept through the mere midnight ; when the dawn reddened
over the hills, she was out on deck again ; she saw the rosiness
creep andblu^h, and spread and burn into the intense pervading
light of the white day ; she heard the cocks crow from the
cheery farms, chanting their fresh " All hail ! " to the earth as
her features came np out the darkness, " Old world ! how do
you do-oo-o?" A mystical stir everywhere was rising out of.
the hush of night ; the very grass-blades and the river-sedge rus-
tled as they had not rustled before, and the great trees stfetched
their green arms from their sleep ; and out on the high road
she could hear the distant sound of wagon-wheels and horses'
feet.
It was yet early morning when they hauled up to the pier at
New Oxford. Up from the water, street above street, three
rows or four, the white houses stood, with a green surge of
tree-tops swelling up between ; and there was a hum in the
town of going to and fro ; yet, compared with the city, it was
still. It would be stiller out toward Broadfields ; almost as still
as it had been down the river among the meadows.
Hope stood by the rail, her bright hair blowing in the pleas-
ant wind ; the morning sunshine on it ; her eyes all alight
with expectation.
A young man, sitting in an open wagon on the wharf, tossed
the rein's over his horse's back, and sprang out. He and John
Drake shook hands. Then he turned to the young girl his
honest, kindly face.
" You've come ?" he said; and helped her up the plank upon
the pier.
A stranger in a strange place. Going to a new home, where
96 HITHERTO:
there might be good for her, or there might be ill ; standing
between the blue, free, glistening river and the busy town, as
she stood at this moment between her bright dream and the
reality that was to come of it ; but showing a pure certainty
in the clear, wonderful eyes, and a fresh, radiant eagerness in
her whole face and figure, over which the morning suu was
shining and the sweet wind blew.
" What is your name? " asked Richard Hathaway.
" Hope Devine," replied the girl, lifting the golden light of
her eyes upon him.
" Whew ! " That does not spell it ; it was a low, gentle
breathing of surprise, not rude, but blithe and musical. " I
think so!"
It had happened that the busy early summer-time was com-
ing ; and that Mrs. Hathaway's Martha needed help ; Richard
had seen it, as he was quick to see every want that touched his
mother.
It happened that John Drake was Richard Hathaway's
friend. Happened? This, also, was "Harm's Providence."
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 97
CHAPTER IX.
WHAT ANSTISS DOLBEARE REMEMBERS.
SOUTH SIDE.
ONE day that next summer, Augusta Hare came among us
ten times more a heroine than ever. Where she was, things
happened. John Gilpin never rode a race but she was there
to sec. Some people seem to have a sort of resinous electric-
ity like this, which draws inevitably toward them all fly-
ing shreds, big and little, of mortal circumstance.
She came upon the stage unannounced, in borrowed cloth-
ing ; beside which, she had nothing on earth to bring with her
but her guitar, and a pink calico wrapper ; a pink calico wrap-
per, for her to whom nothing was yet legitimate, but crape
and bombazine, or little white-dotted black muslins and cali-
coes at the lightest. I remember how this pointed the calam-
ity, and seemed to give a dramatic emphasis and underscoring
to the tale of general desecration and violence.
The Ursuline Convent had been burned down by a mob.
A little piece of Middle Age life had been revived and en-
acted in our tamely proper New England community. Shriek-
ing nuns driven from the sanctity of their cloister ; the sacred
walls invaded at midnight by rough, infuriated men, rushing
where the feet of men, since builders ended their first labors,
had never penetrated before. Quietness and holy seclusion
changed in an hour for riot and blazing devastation.
Augusta told us all about it, graphically. How out of a
sound sleep, she had been startled by a rude, gruff voice, and
a man's rough hand laid forcibly on her shoulder. " Get up,
if you want to save your life I " had been the warning ; and a
red torch went flashing past her open door. How, in her night-
7
98 HITHERTO :
dress, with bare feet, and her hair streaming, catching at this
pink wrapper which happened to lie beside her on a chair, she
sprang from her bed, and followed her arouser into the cor-
ridor ; how he spoke a little more gently then, seeing her
fright, seeing also herself, I could not help inferring, and
even asked if she had airy thing in particular that she wished
to save. How, never thinking of her clothes, as not one soul
in fifty ever does think of the right thing in a fire, she had said
" her guitar," and how he had snatched up the case, and, taking
it under his arm, had hurried her along the passages and down
the stairs, meeting wild, excited men at every step, and out
into the shrubbery, where she overtook some fleeing nuns ;
how they found shelter in the town, and the sisters had to put
on such profane costume as people could lend them, and she
"had nothing under the sun to go downstairs in but that piuk
gown."
Augusta was always personally circumstantial in her narra-
tions ; she lived in the accessories, T think ; that Avas how the
real things passed over her so lightly. How she stood,
and what she was doing, when a surprising or dreadful piece
of news came, the little touches of phase and grouping that
made a picture of an incident, these were- given with won-
derful instinctive skill ; and the strong light fell always on the
principal figure. " Quceque ipse vidi et quorum pars marina
fui" If you knew this little bit of Virgil, it came up. It
seemed realty charming, hearing her recite them, to have en-
dured such things, to have met with such adventure ; above
all, to have them now to tell.
The public occurrence excited strongly our little community.
Anything like lawlessness was then so rare, that men's minds
leaped at the suggestion to the wildest fancies of possible pre-
vailing anarchy ; people stopped in the streets to talk about
it. Uncle Royle's book-store was full of eager gossipers ; it
is amusing to compare the stir made then with the fleeting
impressions of to-day. Two words, after a morning saluta-
tion in a railroad-car, are the sum and end of all the attention
any event can claim. In those days, people came long,
A SWRY OF YESTERDAYS. 99
separate wa3 r s to get together, and when assembled, they would
talk the thing down to the bare thread.
Augusta Hare was regarded with intense curiosity ; she rep-
resented the whole catastrophe, and brought New Oxford into
special relation with it. Even after she got a proper dress,
she was quite modest about venturing into the streets, she was
looked at so ; and at church, for a Sunday or two, it was pos-
itively awkward. She had remarkable tact, though ; it never
seemed a silly, palpable affectation in her ; it was simply, I
believe, the sympathetic action of her own intense self-con-
sciousness that made those about her recognize what I can
only describe as her centrality.
And we, happy household ! became, by a singularity of cir-
cumstance, a part, also, of this sublimity.
The Eclgells were away, and the house was closed. Mar-
garet and Julia were in the midst of their summer term at
school, and Mr. and Mrs. Edgell had just left, upon a long
journey. So the stage had come round to River Street, bring-
ing Augusta Hare, and her guitar case, and her pink wrapper,
and her romantic consequence ; and she had begged Miss
Chism to take her in for a few days, if she could spare her a
room. She asked it gracefully, and as an especial favor ; im-
plying delicately, at the same time, compensation. We were
too well off for that ; we would not think of it, of course ; Miss
Hare was made welcome as a guest. And this was a great
and wonderful event to me.
The worst of it was, that the politer Aunt Ildy was to Au-
gusta Hare, the harder she was to me. I always got on better
with Miss Chism when I was quite alone with her ; my familiar
crimes were not brought in such black contrast with the veiled
infirmities and presumed excellences of strangerhood. The
gracious confidences of Aunt Ildy with our guest were times
of exclusion for me ; not literal exclusion, but that worse inte-
rior consciousness of being thrust aside, and as it were con-
temned. I was even under a curious impression, from my
aunt's manner, of its being a shortcoming in me that I had not
been, somehow, nearly burnt up, or otherwise distinguished ;
that if I had but been, I might take a quite different stand
100 HITHERTO:
with her. I was a commonplace child only, and a trial ; the
interesting and the effective were not for me.
I knew this well enough; but how was I to help it?
She would not let me go to a convent, not even to a
boarding-school. Of course, Aunt Ildy had really no such
actual undervaluing of me in her mind ; it was only a pe-
culiarity of hers that she could not be very gracious in
more than one direction at once ; the effect, however, was
the same with me. I had all manner of fancies of what
might happen : I might break an arm or a leg some day,
and be brought home, I had given up my childish no-
tion of the glory of fainting away. I might secretly com-
pose some verses, and get them printed in a paper, and
become famous. I might, one of these days, have a lover,
though where he was to come from, or how come after me
there, with the Chism battery in the way, was hard to guess,
and get married. The burning ambition of my soul was to
make myself, some day, of consequence with Miss Chism. I
was not so unlike all the rest of the world in this. Miss
Chism, like Mrs. Grundy, was a representative woman ; every-
body who has a goading ambition has knowledge in one guise
or another, of a cold, exasperating unrecognition which it
would be worth while to die and conquer.
Miss Hare had numerous calls of inquiry, and abundant
invitations from the very first. The Copes' carriage waited
at the door for nearly an hour, while the young ladies were
hearing the whole story and trying to persuade Augusta to
go home with them. But she put them off. By and by, per-
haps, if they could have her ; but Miss Chism had been very
kind, and she could not run right awa}'. I think this was
truly a reason with her, and that she was not ungrateful ; also
I think she was fond of me ; but it was true, as well, that her
plain sewing and dress-making were yet to be completed, and
she would rather have an adequate Avardrobe before visiting at
South Side.
She took me with her one afternoon when she walked over
and called at the Copes'. I felt very nicely dressed that day,
I remember. I had a new blue muslin, and Aunt Ildy al-
lowed me to put it on. Indeed, Augusta Hare took friendly
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 101
little liberties in her easy, pleasant way, assuming it for
granted that I could wear what I chose, and suggesting this
or that, sometimes, in Aunt Ildy's presence. I had the bene-
fit of it ; but it gave me the old feeling of a sort of duplicity
on my part ; and, sometimes, I objected against my own secret
wish, because I had an instinct of Miss Chism's secret disrel-
ish. Then, I knew I was double ; yet it was only a crooked
conscientiousness.
I had on my blue muslin, and my straw bonnet, that had
been new last fall, trimmed with white ribbon ; and Augusta
Hare had given me a pretty French collar with a lace edge,
and a blue bow.
It was almost tea-time for us ; but the Copes had only just
got through dinner. " The ladies will b in from the dining-
room directly," the servant said who showed us into the pleas-
ant, cool library, with its summer matting on the floor, and its
furniture and hangings of heavy green damask. Great cases
of books reached from the floor to the ceiling, and from side
to side ; between the shelves hung fringed green velvet ; sil-
ver branches for candles were fastened beside the frames. I
supposed, in my simplicity, that these walls of literature repre-
sented the familiar reading of the family, that every one of
them knew it all ; I was quite oppressed with the air of ele-
gance and learning.
I do not think that I was outwardly awkward ; my quick
feeling of grace and beauty gave me immunity from this ; but
I braced my feet nervously against the floor, and did not know
it till my toes began to ache ; and I could not think of a
word to say beyond mere replies, when the girls came in and
tried to be sociable with me.
Mrs. Cope gave me a feeling of comfort the minute she ap-
peared. She was such a simple, sweet, motherly lady ; with
the old-time dignity upon her that was homely also. She had
on a large white muslin apron over her silk dress, and her
basket of white sewing stood in a deep window-seat, just as
she had left it to go into dinner. She made me think at once,
and did always after, of Mrs. Selby in the Cedar Parlor, in
" Sir Charles Grandison."
She sat down by me, and showed me some beautiful pictures
102 HITHERTO :
of English scenery, and stately interiors of old hills and cas-
tles. Mr. Cope had been a great deal abroad. She was ex-
plaining these when Allard Cope came in. He was my danc-
ing-school partner of two } r ears ago. He was a handsome boy,
with the grace of high breeding, and the free courtesy that
only comes of having received as well as given it, all one's life.
At this time he was about sixteen.
His sisters introduced him to Miss Hare, to whom he bowed,
and then came and sat down by his mother and me. We fin-
ished looking over the portfolio we had begun, and then Mrs.
Cope asked Allard to fetch another, which had views of Paris.
As he came back with it, a carriage was driven to the door,
from which other visitors alighted, and were shown in. Mrs.
Cope moved to receive them, and Allard and I drew back into
a corner, where he remained with me, turning over the engrav-
ings and talking about them.
It was a glimpse into such a rich and beautiful life ! So
rich and beautiful that it made me afraid, but for Allard's
kindness and 'Mrs. Cope's simpleness. I thought that with
them I should not have been afraid, if it had been even ten
times more stately and splendid. I thought I could even get
used to it all in a short time, and accept it as quietly as they
did.
We all went down into the garden presently. Mrs. Cope
had some new French roses which she wished to show to her
friends. She went and put on a white muslin sun-bonnet, and
brought a pair of garden scissors, and then led the way down
the broad, shallow steps which descended from a flagged ter-
race, at the back of the house, to the smooth green turf-walks
and exquisitely kept flower-beds of the pleasure-ground.
Allard still stayed with me ; and while his mother, chatting
gracefully, cut here and there choice blossoms, and gathered
them into a great nosegay for the ladies with her, he pulled
roses and sweet-verbena sprigs and delicious pinks and white
lilies for me.
I was so glad that I had on my blue muslin, and that my
gloves and shoes were quite new. I felt a warm -color spread-
ing in my cheeks, and that I looked up brightly at him in
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 103
answer to the bright, kind looks he gave me. I walked in a
sort of fairy land.
Coming up again, after we had fed the gold-fish in a clear
pond at the garden-foot, we got grouped differently. Augusta
Hare and Allard walked together, and the Miss Copes took
me with them. I had grown gay and fearless now ; we talked
about the old school-times at the academy, and of the Edgells,
and of when they would leave school and come home. The
Copes remembered that I was bright at puzzles and games
and sure at hard lessons. They reverted casually to these
things, in a way far more flattering than abrupt compliment ;
they made me feel that they held me in some consideration.
I am sure there was never a more thorougly polite family than
the Copes.
I dare say they never thought of me again till they were*
especially reminded ; but they sent me home full of delighted
thoughts of them, and ecstatic remembrances of the beautiful
hour that they had given me. Augusta Hare told me some-
thing as we walked down to the bridge, which nearly completed
my mental 'oversetting, and made me feel a sudden electric
flash of pleasure escape from my eyes, as I had felt the con-
scious sparkle of passion that day with Aunt lid}' at Hatha-
way Farm. Allard Cope had said, " What a very pretty girl"
I was !
Aunt Ildy thought, the next day, that it hadn't agreed with
me visiting at South Side ; I couldn't seem to settle to aiv^-
thing properly. It was true that I was more forgetful, and
that small home duties were more irksome to me than eA*er.
I suppose I was really quite good for nothing, by severely
practical appraisal, for a day or two ; but I thought Aunt Ildy
might make some allowance for the first time, and what it
must be to me. Experiences are possible to the gravest and
most methodical, which may utterly break in upon their order,
and absorb their thoughts ; which may be great enough in
their gladness or their grief to sweep away from before them
all ordinary claim and obstacle. I have seen it so ; it takes
far more to do this as one gets on in life ; but the elders
should remember that everything is great to the young ; each
104 HITHERTO :
pleasant novelty is an overwhelming excitement ; all disap-
pointment is tremendous loss ; every new look at life is an
opening into the limitless possible and to come ; they should
allow place for what Aunt Ildy called " scatter-wittedness ; "
it will take place now and then in the programme, where there
are wits to scatter ; beginning as they do upon a world so full
of dispersed demand and attraction.
I sobered down as fast as I could ; I hid away thoughts
and dreams to be called up and fully indulged at rare
moments ; I confined my talk with Aunt Ildy, and in her
presence, to the most staid and useful matters ; to Lucretia,
in her own room, I told over and over again the story of that
lovely afternoon.
All through this fifteenth summer of my life, I was four-
teen in June, I seemed to be looking one way and the
other, touching alternately, and sharing with, two dis-
tinct kinds of living. There was a charm in each. They
were separate from each other ; at least, they rarely met in
any conscious sympathy ; they were wholly unlike and
irreconcilable in practice ; yet I, from a middle -point, could
turn easily and happily to either. There are almost indis-
tinguishable gradations in our New England life and society ;
especially in country towns. It was perfectly natural for me
to associate freely with the Edgells ; it was as natural for
them to be noticed by the Copes ; it was not an overstrained
condescension now and then for the Copes to be kind to me.
It was as pleasant and as natural, on the other hand, for me
to go to the Hathaways, and to be happy at the Farm.
Indeed, though neither of them probably dreamed of it, I,
having experience of the goodness and lovableness of both,
found Mrs. Cope and Mrs. Hathaway by no means unlike.
Sirnpleness and perfect breeding in the one were akin to,
and remindful of, plain dignity and sweet whole-heartedness
in the other. I could imagine them almost easily changing
places, if circumstance should work so.
My position was the middle and prosaic, the negative one ;
the wishful and the restless one, being able to look so, each
way, into the others'.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 105
Just before the Edgells returned home, Augusta Hare came
in one morning from the Copes', where she was now staying,
being set down at our door by the young ladies, who had
driven on to attend to business in the town. She called to
ask Aunt Ildy if I might come over to South Side and take
tea that afternoon.
"We were in the sitting-room, and I was doing up ruffles at
the large table where I had my ruffling-iron. It wanted a
fresh heater at that moment, and I quietly ( drew out the cold
one and went into the kitchen to exchange it. My heart was
going like a little trip-hammer, but I did not move so much 'as
an eyelid. I knew my sole chance depended on my not get-
ting excited, or pleading too impetuously. It was safer to
leave the pleading to Miss Hare.
It was a good stroke my leaving the room. I was really
calmer when I came back ; and Aunt Ildy had not committed
herself by an immediate refusal in my hearing, which could
not have been receded from. She had probably half refused
at first ; when I came in Augusta was sayiug in her most win-
ning way :
" You'll think of it, I'm sure, Miss Chism ; we shall all
hope to see her ; but you need not trouble to send word, 3-011
know- If she comes, she can be there by four. And Mrs.
Cope sent her love, and asked me to beg of you, if you would
be so kind, to let her have your receipt for white currant wine
that I told her of. Anstiss can bring it ; or if anything does
prevent^ I'll call again for it."
The carriage was heard in the street below, and Augusta
rose.
" See about it, Aunt Ildy, won't you? " she repeated, and
was gone.
She had wonderful tact. She might have known Aunt lid}'
all her life, and not done better. If she had pressed for an
immediate answer, it would very likely have been " No."
That would have been on the safe side. But she showed a
sweet confidingness, gave plenty of time for thinking it over,
and left her desire at Miss Chism's discretion.
" Have you finished marking those new pillow-cases ? " asked
106 HITHERTO:
Aunt Ildy of me. It was Saturday, and they were to be put
in the wash on Monday.
"All but four, auntie," I replied. "I can do those after
dinner." And I went on fluting my ruffle.
" Can I go, Aunt Ildy ? " I asked a few minutes later when
I had finished, and was about to carry away the things, the
topmost of which were two caps of her own, exquisitely
white and light with their double bordering of cambric and
lace laid in the finest and most regular groovings.
" I don't know ; I'll see," replied Miss Chisrn.
I considered that as good as settled, after the old under-
standing, especially as I saw her go to the old-fashioned sec-
retary presently, take down her manuscript receipt-book, and
try a pen.
I did not wait to watch her, but made haste upstairs.
Then on the very tips of my toes, right over her head, but so
lightly that not an old board creaked in the floor, I executed
an original inspired waltz, ending with a flourish that I had
never heard of by name, but which was legitimate art, a
real, perfect pirouette. Dancing is an utterance. I invented,
out of my own gladness, one of its established parts of
speech.
I carried my blue muslin into the kitchen and ironed it out.
I crimped my prettiest bits of lace, and basted them into the
neck and sleeves. I laid out my nicest white petticoat, with
little tucks and points round the bottom ; a work of long
toil and many sorrows it had been to me, but I was very glad
-to have it now ; in those days, before sewing machines and
the multiplied extravagances of needlework, most young
ladies made for themselves whatever elegancies of the kind
they had, and it was a shame at fifteen not to have made
something ; I assured m}*self that my best open-worked
thread stockings, with the silk clocks, were in fresh readiness
and order, and I gave a look to the condition of my -large
starched under-sleeves of corded cambric, that were to hold
out in balloon shape the full round over-sleeves of my dress,
with their pointed, falling capes, trimmed with little ruffles
of their own material. The crimpings of thread lace finished
A STORT OF YESTERDAYS. 107
delicately the close bands into which they were gathered
about the arm. I had high morocco shoes of what we called
tea-color, pale, with plenty of cream in it, laced up on
the instep. All these things I put ready, and then went down
and ate my dinner without the least bit of appetite, but with
resolute show of common sense.
'/ Shall I get ready, aunt ? " I asked, when I had helped her
put away the glass and silver.
" Yes, I suppose so."
She did not speak ungraciously. She was never outwardly
affectionate to any one. -With all her hardness of discipline,
and her taking me at my worst by way of fiualty making the
best of me, she had, I do not doubt, a stern regard for me at
the bottom of her heart ; but if she had said " Yes, dear," 1
should have thought she was gone mad or going to die ; or
that the millennium had come, and had begun with her.
I did look pretty when I had finished. My hair was getting
a brighter, burnished tint upon the softness of the childish
light-brown, and my eyes had the clear, intense shade which
blue eyes only have in youth and health. I smiled at myself
in the glass, remembering Allard Cope's compliment, and
I caught sight of small, even, white teeth between lips that
were far prettier when smiling. I put a blue ribbon round
my head, and fastened it in a bow over my left ear, letting
the ends float down behind. I tucked them up, though, care-
fully, into the crown of my bonnet, as I tied that on. I but-
toned on my long sleeves for the street, and put on my
gloves. I Avas all ready then, and I went downstairs.
" I don't think it will be best for you to stay to tea, Ans-
tiss," Aunt Ildy said, as if she were not crushing me down
with an avalanche of cruel disappointment. Perhaps she
really did not dream that she was.
" O Aunt Ildy ! " I cried, in a pain of involuntary resist-
ance and reproach.
" Don't get excited now," said Aunt Ildy. " You can go up
and call, and carry the receipt. You can stay an hour, if
you want to. But I don't think it's best for you to stay to
tea."
108 . HITHERTO :
" Why didn't you tell me so before ? "
" I didn't tell you anything about.it. I've been thinking it
over. There's nobody to go after you in the evening, and I
don't want to be under obligation to them for seeing you
back. We can't invite the Copes to tea. You must make up
your mind that I know best."
The tears were in my eyes and voice. There was a hot
anger on my cheeks. I felt I had been ill-treated, yet I could
find nothing to gainsay.
" I can't go, just to tell them I can't come," I said, despair-
ingly, struggling against the tears and the temper. " They'll
insist on my staying. They'll say they can send me home.
I can't tell them you won't be under obligation."
"You can say what I tell you, that it isn't convenient.
If you can't do that, you'd better not go. You are not to
stay to tea. That is all." And she walked away, and left
me standing there.
When she was quite out of hearing, I stamped my foot
down just once upon the floor. I think I should almost have
died, if I had not done that. Then I ran downstairs, and out
at the front door, and walked off, down Cross Street, opposite,
fast towards the bridge.
I walked so fast, and my feelings were in such a whirl, that
I got to the Copes' front door before I had begun to make up
my mind what to say. They were all out on the back terrace,
and the maid who met me recognized me, and showed me at
once through the house to the garden entrance.
Then I had it all to do in a minute, in the little bustle of
greeting and welcome. I had to hold on to my bonnet-strings,
when Laura Cope would have untied them ; to shrink away
from Augusta Hare who would have taken my muslin cape,
and to stammer out confusedly, transposing and mixing up
my meanings :
"No I can't I only came I didn't come to stop
but a great while ! "
They all smiled. They could not have helped it if the} 7 had
been duchesses ; only their perfect good-breeding kept them,
I am sure, from shrieks. I laughed myself, in the midst of a
A STOKY OF YESTERDAYS. 109
flame of mortification and a springing of tears. If I had
known what I was in danger of, it would have been all over
with me. I was as near hysterics as a simple child could be.
" Never mind," Mrs. Cope said, kindly. " Sit here in the
shade by me. You are so warm with your walk. We'll talk
about the bonnet presently."
The sweet summer wind came through great linden-trees
and over fresh-smelling grass and masses of flowers. The
calm, restful hills lay green and round against the blue
horizon, and little white clouds went floating by, far overhead.
There was a glimpse of the river-dazzle out between the open
fields, where it made its sharp western bend around the town.
It is a great thing to look aipay. Between brick walls, sor-
rows pin one clown, and grind and gnaw one's life. It is so
natural, when things go wrong in-doors, to sit and look out of
a window, if the window looks anywhere. You think that
you are sulky or miserable, perhaps you mean to be, at
first ; but presently you have gotten all over it. You have
gone out from yourself, away off among tree-branches and
cloud-islands, carrying your trouble with you, and there you
give it the slip, and leave it to melt away.
I felt calm and bright again in five minutes, sitting there
by Mrs. Cope, listening to her friendly words contrived to call
for little answer, and linking their pleasantness dreamily with
every pleasant color and motion and form upon which my
vision lingered.
" And now about the bonnet," she began again, just at a
nice moment, when nobody was particularly looking. " Can't
we have it off ? or what is the difficulty? "
I began at the right end now. " I might take it off, I sup-
pose ; but I wanted to tell you first, Aunt II dy sent her com-
pliments, and said I might stay for an hour or so, but that it
wouldn't be convenient to spare me till after tea."
"Perhaps it was the sending for you? I thought of that,
and meant to manage it. It ought to have been mentioned.
I can send down a message now to Miss Chism, and tell her
we'll take care of you, if she Will allow you to stay. We shall
110 HITHERTO:
.drive out after tea, and we can bring you round on our way
home."
"Oh, thank you, Mrs. Cope; but, indeed please not!
I'm sure Aunt Ildy meant me to come home."
" Then we won't say another word," said Mrs. Cope, with
the truest kindness ; " but make the most of our hour, and
manage better next time."
There was a whole world of consolation for me in those last
two words.
They got it all into that hour, I think. They had the
bagatelle board brought out on the terrace, croquet was a
thing to come in the after years, and we played the gaine
with the bridge, as easiest for a beginner. Allard and his
mother and I sided together against the Miss Copes and
Augusta. We played nine rounds, and came out a hundred
and fifty ahead. Allard said I made wonderful strokes. I
thought I had wonderful luck, and was delighted not to spoil
their side of the game.
Then they would have raspberries and cream, and delicious
little almond cakes for me ; the best part of the tea that I
could not stay for ; and then Allard gathered me some flowers,
and when I put on my gloves and bade good-by, he said it was
time for the mail, and he would walk down with me and bring
home his mother's letters.
It was their beautiful way of entertaining, I know ; every-
body found it delightful at the Copes ; and they were kindly
sorry for my embarrassment and disappointment, and so
turned it all into the greater if the shorter pleasure ; some-
body else came in, very likely, as soon as I had gone, and was
just as solicitously attended to ; but it made me feel as noth-
ing but Richard Hathaway's and his mother's kindness had
ever made me feel before ; as if people cared for me to be
happy ; and I might, if but for a little while, be made the
principal thing. I thought what it must be to have a life full
of such care, and how some people had it, and some not.
And then there was the walk down hill and up into the town
with Allard.
I felt a little pleasant tingle of pride, when we met some
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. Ill
of the school-girls on the bridge, and he lifted his cap because
I bowed to them. I could tell by the sound of their steps
that they turned to look after they had passed us. It was a
great thing to come upon Aunt Ildy at the street door, just
going in from an errand, and to have her see him shake hands
with me, and give me the flowers, which he had carried all the
way, and hear him say he was sorry I could not have made a
longer visit. I think I took on a kind of self-possession and
elegance myself, being treated so ; and that my parting bow
and thanks had a South Side air that Aunt Ildy's lacked.
I took off my blue muslin, and put on my brown calico, and
got my stocking basket, and sat down till tea was ready. I
had been so happy that it was easy to be very good. I forgot
all that had seemed hard and cruel, and looked upon it quite
in a new light. I even tried to get some sympathy from Aunt
Ildy in a pleasure that would not altogether be laid aside in
silence. Or, rather, my pleasure so overflowed, like the little
brook into which a generous rain has poured, that it made a
glad little ripple over the very rock that hemmed it in.
" I had a beautiful time," I said. " Mrs. Cope was so good !
And I think it was very nice of Allard to come home with me."
" The Copes are very polite," replied the rock ; " and your
Uncle Royle has always been thought a good deal of. Mr.
Cope sits and talks with him in his little room about their
books and politics. But I guess I wouldn't call that young
man by his Christian name, if I were you."
How absurd I had been, and how ashamed I was ! Those
few words of Aunt Ildy's, and the tone of them, laid bare,
and touched to wincing, possible and half-comprehended things ;
that which perhaps was in me, and perhaps was not, but of
which I was certainly not conscious till her dry rebuke covertly
accused me. Foolishly-raised conceit, presumption, forward-
ness, and something more, undefined, unwarranted and
ridiculous also, a claim of familiarity, as if Allard Cope
were anything, especially, to me! "That young man!" I
did not know that I had thought of him as a young man be-
fore ; he was only one of a delightful family, the nearest to
my own age, who had shown me a graceful friendliness. Then
112 HITHERTO:
I remembered the girls upon the bridge ; and I analyzed my
feeling there ; I blushed as I questioned if it had been quite
free from silliness, and all the quick sensitiveness of fifteen
shamed me before my own self-judgment, provoked to harsh-
ness by Aunt Ildy's blunt reproof.
In the midst of it all, though, I could not help secretly wish-
ing that she could have known what he had really said ; that
" I was such a pretty girl ! " I made up my mind distinctly,
however, that I would not call him " Allard " any more ; that
to Aunt Ildy I would not speak about the Copes at all.
They must have talked it over at South Side ; and Augusta
must have told them something ; for the next thing that hap-
pened was a regular coup d'etat.
Mr. Cope himself rode up to the office door one morning,
and as a boy brought out his letters, he begged that Mr.
Chism would come to him a moment.
I was getting out fresh linen from the chest of drawers in
the front room above, and the windows were up, and the green
blinds closed. I just heard the sound of their voices, at first,
but I caught distinctly Mr. Cope's last words.
" Mrs. Cope has quite set her heart upon it ; she has taken
a great fancy to your little niece ; she will call this afternoon,
and ask Miss Chism."
It was not natural to me to be secret and politic ; it went
hard ; if I had had a dear mother, pleased with my pleasure,
sure to allow all that was right and good for me, I should have
run to her direetly with this wonderful hint that I had heard ;
and I think she would have helped me in my hopes and
guesses; but before Aunt Ildy I closed my mouth,, and
waited. I changed the bureau-covers and pillow-cases as she
had bidden me ; I sat down quietly to my sewing ; by and by
I laid the table for dinner, it being baking-day, and Lucretia
busy. I was unusually silent, and I hardly dared let my eyes
meet Aunt Ildy's ; I knew they would have sparkled if I did,
and if I had opened my lips I should have sung.
Uncle Royle came in rather early, and told the whole before
me. He did not know much how things went on upstairs ; he
lived so in the store and office, and in his little room behind.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 113
Mrs. Cope was intending to call on Aunt Ildy, and ask leave
for me to come to them next week, and stay Thursday and
Friday. The young ladies would have some j'ounger cousins
to entertain, girls of my own age, and would be obliged if I
would come and help. There was not a large neighborhood
then at South Side, and there was not swift communication
far and near, as there is now. It had been in this way the
Copes had used to come down for the Edgells.
" I suppose she can go," said Uncle Royle. "I told Mr.
Cope so, and I think she'd better. It is a very particular at-
tention. You'd like it, wouldn't you, Anstiss ? It will do you
good. There's never any harm in getting what one can of
good society ; and you don't have many pleasuring^."
" I think j'ou are very kind, Uncle Royle ! " I answered,
letting my grateful pleasure brim and tremble over in eye and
voice. " May I, Aunt Ildy ? "
I am afraid she felt almost insulted by this form of defer-
ence ; but I could not help it ; I must ask her ; it would have
been worse if I had not.
" It seems to be all settled," she replied, grimly.
" Oh, yes," said Uncle Royle, taking her innocently at her
word. " Since you don't know of anything to prevent ; and I
supposed you couldn't." Uncle Royle did not see much, to
be sure ; but he had lived with Aunt Ildy all his life, and
it is possible that in a simple way he was now and then in-
spired.
" I don't know what she's got to wear," Aunt Ildy remarked.
" There's time enough," said Uncle Royle. "If she wants
a new gown, let her have it. I'll tell you what, Annie, you
and I'll go shopping together this afternoon, while Aunt Ildy
talks it over with Mrs. Cope."
It did not occur to Uncle Royle very often to interest him-
self directly in the plans and personal wants of people ; when
he did begin, he seemed to wake up to it as to a pleasure that
he had been rather clever in discovering, and that was of
easier attainment than he had supposed. He always went on
from one thing to more.
" Your Uncle Royle says so and so," " Your Uncle Royle
114 HITHERTO:
thinks best ;" these were often very decisive words in Aunt Ildy's
mouth to me ; therefore, when he said so and so in my presence,
or thought best to do anj'thing thus out of his own head, she
had the consistency not to actively oppose. But I think she
felt herself circumvented.
Uncle Royle bought me a green and white narrow-striped
silk, and told Mr. Norcross he might put up the " trimmings "
with it ; the construction of which order was such that besides
the cambric and linen and sewing-silk and hooks and eyes,
there came home with the parcel two yards of ribbon and a
yard and a half of thread lace. The whole cost thirteen dol-
lars and a half; it was in the good old times when six }'ards
made a skirt, and a pretty summer silk cost but a dollar a
yard. I wonder everybody did not wear silk then ; that, how-
ever, was reserved for the days of seventy-dollar dresses, that
we have come to now. Now it is something worth while, and
everybody brings it to pass. Cook-maids, in consequence,
get their four dollars a week.
It seemed to me, then, a grand outlay ; I thought I was pro-
vided like a princess. Truly there was some poetry coming
for me at last. It was like Miss Austen's heroines going to
London and Bath, to see the rich, gay world. I was just
old enough to fancy that I might have fallen upon the title-
page of my romance. Two days were an enormous time !
Aunt Ildy measured and pieced ; did her duty by the silk
dress now that it was bought ; and her duty was never done
until a piecing was got in somehow.
I ran the breadths, and covered bits of piping-cord ; then I
was set at turning some old sheets, to keep my mind down to
usefulness and every-day ; meanwhile nry fancy was living those
two glorified days at South Side, and crowding them with all
possibilities of delight until they became a golden age of glad-
ness. Years lay between me, already, and yesterday morning
when the green and white silk dress was begun. Kept down
to commonplace? Every stitch in the old sheet was a grapple
upon some fairy chain of imagination by which I climbed and
climbed out of this every-day of mine into an illimitable para-
dise. They were magic hours, and it was the bean-stalk of the
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 115
story, a common work done under a kitchen Avindow, from
which something grew and reached up until it touched the
clouds. Up and down its flowering path I travelled. Aunt
Ildy looked after the village dress-maker and her pieces and
her threads of sewing-silk ; she thought me under a wholesome
domestic discipline. Well, one half the world doesn't know
what the other half is about, even when it has got it under
eye and thumb.
The Copes came for me on Wednesday, just before tea. I
had on my blue dress ; the new silk, and a purple-striped cal-
ico for mornings, were in Uncle Royle's old-fashioned black port*
manteau, with some clean collars and pocket-handkerchiefs,
and my night-things ; and the key was in my pocket. I was
mistress of all this for two days ; only the invisible restraint
of Aunt Ildy's admonitions and expectations went with me.
That hangs about me to this day. I feel the old habitual
twitch at my acquired conscience, every time I put on a fresh
lace recklessly, or wear my best gloves, because the second-
best have a rip in the finger.
Can I ever forget the exquisite pleasure it was to me when
they put me in possession of that room up in the west wing,
over the garden? Only for two nights' sleeping and two days'
dressing; and it was so much to me, such a beginning, that
troubled itself with no end, and that I must fain linger over
now, while the story of years in the after-life awaits to be
remembered ! This is the way, though, that we do remember.
Point after point, as we find out its full meaning, perhaps, will
all our life come back, to us one day in like manner, when
everything shall be great and full, measured by no moments
of time, or any earthly comparison, but only by its relation to
what has been in and from ourselves through its experience.
Place is so much to us. To me, at least, it alwaj r s was :
from the seat at school to the home one makes between four
walls somewhere, long afterward ; and ajl the lesser and tran-
sient abidings that come between ! The corner in a stage-
coach for a day's ride over the hills, or the better perch upon
the springing roof; the window in a rail-car; the state-room in
a steamer ; the nook in God's hottse that is our own, and where
116 HITHERTO:
we can always pray and listen best ; the earth under the trees
of a cemetery, or on the sunny slope of a simple graveyard,
where we shall lie down at last ! The best promise for the
beyond : a " place" for us there, also. t
All this from the thought of that pretty summer room into
which the linden-trees rustled, and the breath of the white
lilies came up from below.
The four corners were cut off, turning it into an octagon,
and making little triangular closets and arched recesses before
which curtains hung. In one of these last was the quaint little
'half-circular toilet, and the tilted round mirror above it, the
draperies always looped back from before them ; everything in
the room was of an antique grace, and made one think of the
maidenhood of a past generation that had dwelt and decked
itself here, and been beautiful in the old-time fashion. In
another, stood the washing-stand, a wonderful little airy
tripod, running up to hold a china basin in a light, polished
rim of some dark, rich wood, while below, between the sup-
ports, was just a solid round big enough for the slender ewer.
Beside, a towel-stand, tall and narrow, its three rods only as
wide each as the folded damask that hung therefrom gleaming
with glossy, delicate diaper of vine and clover-leaves. Above,
tiny triangular shelves, with all the rest of the service and
appliance needed.
I just stood-still a minute and clapped my hands, when I was
left alone. My pleasure was as full as if I had been to call it all
mine from that time always. And why not ? It has been ever
since. You cannot " give and take away again," into and from
a life.
I heard Allard Cope go whistling down the stairs as I
smoothed my hair. I heard a door open and a gay young
voice, one of the cousins', call to him and stop him. Then
there were some little teasing words and questions, and a
laugh, about something that had happened, or been foretold,
or promised and forgotten, I forget what, only a bit out of
the life of a happy house into which I was coming, and then
presently steps returned toward my door, and Laura Cope
came in to take me down tcrtea. Those two minutes, again,
were not minutes. In them I entered into and enjoyed some-
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 117
thing that opened toward a rich and endless knowledge and
duration.
They introduced me to Grace and Sarah Braithley, and gave
me a sea* between Augusta Hare and Sarah. Grandon Cope
and his father came in from a ride as we sat down to our late,
twilight tea. Grandon had a branch of wild blossoms for his
mother, that he came up to lay beside her plate. He leaned
over her close as he did so, and she looked up at him with a
lovely light in her eye. Mrs. Cope was beautiful with her sons. I
learned first from her what a full grace motherhood has ; how
a woman only comes to her whole, rich fairness then, when the
years sit upon her like a crown, and a love devotes itself to
her that has grown up out of her own life and stands beside it
now, no chance comer, but its very own, its perfecting and re-
ward. I think the purest tenderness, the most chivalrous at-
tending she can ever have, comes to her so ; and that no trick
or grace of early youth, no coquettish queening of it in girl's
beauty, can compare with the radiance and the winsome dig-
nity that are upon her then.
The Copes were English in their origin and connection.
Grandon had just come home from Cambridge, where he had
been sent for his University education ; the whole family was
making much of him, and the neighborhood looked on admir-
ingly. After this summer stay he was going abroad again
with his father, to visit the Continent, perhaps to remain and
pursue some scientific taste he had in Germany. But his
mother claimed him first, and he came all across the water,
a wearier way than now, to bring her his fresh honors and
his affectionate duty.
Grandon began again the little bantering with Allard, and
brought his cousins upon him afresh. There was such a charm
to me in this little sportive justle and antagonism between
people who could afford, out of their wealth of heart-kindliness
and true courtesy, to affect it for the fun of the moment, in
which something half-serious was affectionately hid ! To be
taken to task with a jest was such a different thing from the
grinding earnest I was used to, the fault-finding so real, so
depressing, and down-holding ! Allard maintained his own,
118 HITHERTO:
and answered back with an adroitness that turned the tables,
and brought the laugh as genial as before with him in-
stead of against him. Even his father would let himself be
conquered by a repartee, such as if I had ventured pon with
Aunt Ildy would have been very nearly the end of all things.
What was daring and defiant in me was the mere play and
grace of life here among these happy children whose life had
been allowed to grow. One good, perhaps, was meant by both
methods. It was only the difference of ways. But to me it
was all the difference between the branching growth kept
nailed and trained against a wall, and the free tossing of green
boughs in a gay, sunny orchard. "Wall-fruit may be good ;
some natures might never bear, perhaps, in other fashion. But
I like the free flavor best.
It was only the family party to-night; to-morrow there
would be company at dinner and in the evening.
We all sat out on the terrace in the moonlight. I got as
near to Mrs. Cope as I could. Sitting there, with the folds of
her soft muslin dress lying lightly over and against mine,
she wore the prettiest dress to-night, figured with the tiniest
old-fashioned sprigs of pale pinks, and round the hem and about
the wrists just a narrow bit of ruffle of the same that looked
so delicate and ladylike, so just like her, and in her belt, in
the sweet, old, simple way, a nosegay, I dreamed a sort of
dream, thinking out a picture of a life such as might have been
for me if Mrs. Cope, or anybody like her, had been my mother.
The faint image I had in my mind of a mother, gathered
vaguely from dim association with all that had belonged
to my own, and that was laid away in the high bureau in the
front room at Miss Chism's, was of something just so
nice and delicate and sweetly pure, accompanied with some
faint, never-absent, clinging sense of fragrance about all she
wore ; not just perfumed, but taken out of careful folds from
some drawer where rose-leaves had lain, and other sweet-
smelling things had long ago been dropped among laces and
linens, till all the old wood was full of a rare, gentle odor that
would never leave it any more. And the repose and sweet-
ness and perfumed grace of courtesy about Mrs. Cope were
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 119
something like these also, and as if they could fittingly array
themselves in no other sort of outward vesture. Nothing new,
just bought at the shops, and poured as a false, obtrusive
anointing, about a common life ; but an old ingrained sweet-
ness of real roses that had been gathered long ago. The very
word " mother," learned among fair relics, and beside gentle
lives like this and Mrs. Hathaway's, sounded and savored of
such things to me. If Miss Chism had been anybody's
mother, but that could never have been. Thank God, I
never saw anything of motherhood but the beauty of it ! So I
know it the better, perhaps, as we learn many things in this
life that is only a life of types, from having missed it.
Sarah Braithley proposed some quiet games that were new
things then ; games of intellect, such as I always liked. The
Cope girls drew me out, and the soft, shielding moonlight and
their mother beside me made me brave, and I took my part
with delight. We grew merry over them, and I made quick
answers, and everybody laughed, and I got excited, and I
think I was rather brilliant for a child. Something, at any
rate, always popped into my head when my turn came, and it
got so at last that they rather hurried round to me to see
what I would say ; and sometimes one of them, in a puzzle,
would make me find a reason or a word for them. Mr. Cope
would say " Bravo ! " and they would all give a well-bred,
little, musical shout of laughter together at some of my sallies.
Allard tossed the hard things toward me, and seemed
especially proud when I succeeded. I think Allard always
took to himself credit in these days for having found me out
first, and behaved as if I somehow belonged to him particu-
larly, by right of discovery. We were very jolly friends, and
I was not a bit afraid of him ; but I fairly trembled with a sort
of scared triumph when Mr. Grandon Cope, who was so old
and such a scholar, and of such consequence, joined in the
glee and applause, and gave me special questions to try me.
The idea of my surprising or amusing him ! It seemed
stranger to do this with him than with his father. Old gen-
tlemen, somehow, are always kind and easily pleased ; or else
they are people just to be let alone, and there is the end of it.
120 HITHERTO:
I could be a little saucy, even, with Mr. Cope, for he patted
me on the shoulder, and I knew I was only a little child to
him. But Grandon treated me just as he did Augusta
Hare, and it was something real and startling when he turned
over his part in the game to me, and watched in earaest to see
what I would make of it. It was only out of curiosity and
for greater sport, of course ; he could have answered all the
questions if he had tried ; but he gave up all effort deliber-
ately at last, and came round behind his mother and me, and
handed them regularly, as it were, over my shoulder, with,
"Now?" " Miss Anstiss, why is it?" or, "Why do I? I'm
sure I don't know."
He had a " thought " himself, at last, in " "What is my
Thought like ? " And I told him it was like the toothache.
At which, before his thought was declared, he laughed im-
moderately.
" I'm afraid it is to you," he said ; " but you'll have to
tell me why. I thought of my stupidity. Now ? "
" Because," I answered, in a very serious, tired way, " what
can't be cured must be endured."
I had actually been saucy with him ! I felt myself burn all
over, as soon as I had said it, and a sort of horrible vision of
Aunt Ildy and her day-of-judgment face rushed up before
me.
" I couldn't help it," I stammered out. " It was all the
answer there was."
"Of course it was!" he cried, and the second shout of
laughter was more explosive than the first. Between the two
I seemed to hear my little, blundering excuse dropping like
an absurd echo. I could not play any more. Myself,
measured by Aunt Ildy's estimation, stood, like a mean re-
ality to shame my counterfeit, in the way of my new self-pos-
session and brilliancy. As the Copes treated me, I had been
raised to a higher and more happily assured sort of self; or,
rather, I had not thought about myself, exactly, at all. In
bright, pleasant exercise, when every muscle moves with a
gladness, one does not think about the body. The physical
life goes into the thing one is doing. Mental life works so
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 121
too, sometimes. I think I bad often been least conscious of
myself when, as I fancied afterward, my secondary con-
science coming up, I hud been most forward.
They saw that I had frightened myself; and perhaps they
thought they had not been quite fair ; I know they had really
liked it, and had not been making fun of me, though I knew
with the terrible insight that always haunted me and super-
induced that state of conscience, that it was what Miss Chism
would say ; but they understood at once now ; and they let the
game drop, in a sort of glory to me, too, as if there was noth-
ing more to be said after that ; only Mr. Cope would now and
then break out into a little after-laugh of his own, as if he
could not quite get over it. Grandon and Mrs. Cope talked
on with me a good while about a good many things. Nobody
hushed up, or stopped suddenly, seeming as if they were
shocked, or could imagine that they were supposed to be. It
was so nice to be among people of nice perceptions.
Mrs. Cope kissed me when she said good-night. The soft
lace lappet of her little cap touched my cheek, and that deli-
cate, nameless odor of things exquisitely cared for came with
my breath for an instant, and the word " mother " was in my
heart again.
Augusta Hare went up when I did, and Grandon Cope gave
us our candles, and held open the door for us.
It was an altogether different thing, and yet somehow it put
me in mind of the good-nights at the Farm, and Richard Hatha-
way lighting a little lamp for me with a coal from the fireplace,
and the going from the warm kitchen into the little press-room
where I slept so safe. Was it so different? Or only the
same sweet tune, played in a different key?
I lay awake for a time that seemed like hours. I suppose it
might really have been one. My young brain was all awhirl
with high excitement ; it would not stop when the evening
ended, but went on and on, over and over, with it all, in mar-
vellous flashes of repetition.
Augusta Hare had said to me when she went away, " You
got on famouslv, only don't break down in the midst again, as
if you were a sort of Cinderella, and it had struck twelve."
122 HITHERTO:
That was just it. A fairy godmother gave me a beautiful
dress, and lent me a bit of a beautiful life ; I could forget my-
self in it for a while ; but something jarred, and I was back in
what I had lived in so long ; a sort of meanness and rags. I
believe that is what the old fable means.
Yet the rags were the false things. How is it that they
cling to people so ?
I went to sleep at last, and dreamed that everybody at South
Side was out on the terrace, fitting on glass shoes ; nobody's
would go on but mine ; and then everybody brought theics to
me, and I slipped my foot into every one ; and they all shouted
and applauded, and brought me heaps and heaps ; till crack !
away went one into shivers that Grandon Cope stood offering
me, and at the same moment a great bell, with Aunt Ildy's
eyes looking out of it, swung over my head, and seemed to
crash through me as if I, too, were made of glass and shivering
to splinters ; and then there was nothing left but ray little old
self in a dreadful bonnet that Miss Chism had pinned up with
faded ribbons and broken straw, and I had a great rent in my
dress, and my feet in shabby shoes, and Richard Hathaway
came and led me away.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 123
CHAPTER X.
ON THE HOUSE-TOP.
NEXT morning we all we girls, I mean went down the
garden and away into the lane after flowers and vines for the
tables and baskets and vases. In the garden we got roses and
white lilies, gay scarlet geraniums and great purple velvet
pansies, and sprays of light vines, cypress, and creeping myr-
tle ; in the lane that ran with its banks of shade all along
against the garden foot we found wealth of clematis and wild
woodbine. Then we came back and made the house a bower.
"We sat in the long, cool hall, and cut our wreaths and 'assorted
our clusters, and flitted back and forth, putting them about in
the rooms ; and then we gathered up the refuse into a wide
basket, and a housemaid carried it off, and brushed up every
scrap from the white India matting ; and nobody was put out,
and it seemed as if no labor had been done, or any " clutter "
that bugbear of Aunt Ildy's stem house-keeping had been
made. Things seemed to work out and fall into order in this
house, as I suppose they must in the kingdom of heaven.
Afterward, we had a long morning in Mrs. Cope's room.
"When I think of these times, I remember every little detail,
and I cannot help dwelling upon them all and living them over.
They were so much to me. They made an atmosphere of liv-
ing into which I can seem to go back with the thought of them.
Things have this power with me that impress me at all. Books
do it ; and people whose experience I have entered into by a
sympathy that had its root often in the longing of my nature
for the same. A breath of pleasantness across the commonest
day of my own living, a puff of summer air even, or the smell
of a pink, or the clearing up after a shower, will bring up a
subtle essence of all these things to me, the spirit of which I
1 24 HITHERTO :
have been gathering from here and there, even while the letter
was denied me. I am old enough now to have learned that
we don't want the letter half the time. It is true in this way
also, that it sometimes killeth. It is the spirit only which
giveth life. The world is but a show of things ; a kindergar-
ten, where we learn by object-lessons. It is only the very
little ones to whom the object is all.
Augusta dressed my hair for dinner, in quite a grown-up
style, making a long French twist of it, and gathering the ends
of that which she parted at the front in clusters of little curls,
to fall behind my ears. She put a white rose with green
leaves against the coil of the twist at the side, and a few buds
and leaves, for a breast knot, upon the lace which fell over
my silk dress from around my throat. Her own hair was done
in a low round coil behind, and carried back from the front in
wide-looped, heavy braids, in which she had woven some
white cypress blossoms that looked like little stars.
I had never been at a regular dinner before. It was like a
feast served in the " Arabian Nights." The still coming and
going of the servants, the noiseless changing of plates and
dishes, the delicate garnishings, the simplicity of the elegance
that made even me feel in five minutes as if it were such a
matter of course, and a thing I had so long been used to,
all this was different from any " having company" that I ever
saw before.
With Aunt Ildy " company " was a kind of a fever. From
the baking of the cake to the getting out of the best china, it
was a succession of crises ; and there was no knowing what
turn any of them would take. We stopped living beforehand,
and took it up again when the company was gone. The
interval was an abnormal condition. Here, into a beautiful,
established living, friends came, and that was all. In this
again there was a strange reminder, even with a contrast, of
Hathaway Farm. There you " dropped in, laid off your
things, and stayed ; " and everything was always ready. So
people borrowed a little freshness from each other, and got
really something out of each other's sphere and story. In
the other fashion, "taking tea out" was being out; you got
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 125
into nobody's home ; one place was like another ; you might
as well go and sit upon a fence between your fields.
Allard Cope sat by me at the table ; and when we left the
dining-room and scattered ourselves in the hall and library
and drawing-room while cups of tea and coffee were being
carried about, he took me out on the broad front steps, and
the other younger ones came too, and we sat there chatting
and laughing in the soft dusk that was rather a glow between
the fulness of day and the night-radiance that was coming.
Mr. Grandon Cope had gone up into a little room that was
his in the half-story in the roof. He had a telescope here, and
a flight of steps ran up through a skylight window to the flat
centre of the house-top. He was going to take out and fix
his instrument, and show us by and by the conjunction of
Jupiter and the moon.
" If you like, that is," said Allard, carelessly, telling us.
" I don't think I'm anxious. The planets can take care of
themselves ; they're pretty sure to be in the right places ; I'd
as lief take Gran's and the Almanac's word for it, and look
after the conjunctions down here."
Allard was not a bit like Grandon ; he was clever enough,
and he would always be a gentleman ; he would have that
nameless grace of society that shapes one's orbit in it and
makes it bright and wide ; he would be satisfied with this, and
leave, as he said, the planets and such -matters to take care of
themselves.
But the crown of a man's manhood to me is some insight or
authority or knowledge that puts him above the ordinary
plane of every-day things ; he must take hold somewhere,
spiritually or intellectually, upon the things of God.
There was a great chair-swing in one of the lindens, in which
two of us could sit together ; we went out to it presently, and
Allard sent Sarah Braithley and me tossing up into the
branches.
We stayed here under the deep boughs, taking our turns in
the swing, till it grew quite uurk in the shadows ; darker than
we had thought it would be on this bright night, though there
126 HITHERTO:
was an hour yet before moonrise. The wind was coming up,
too, stronger, out of the south.
Before we thought of going in, it had got to be so that
there was only the gleam of our light dresses to see each other
by. The great tree, arching down on every side to the deep
grass, made a mysterious gloom, into which we could seem to
look as into an immense distance where sight lost itself.
Swinging out toward the verge, we saw the bright house-
lights twinkle suddenly, and then go out as we dropped back
into the thick shade.
There were only Kitty Cope, the Braithleys, and I. Au-
gusta and Laura were singing in the drawing-room.
Suddenly, across the music, there came a deep, low roll, and
the quick leaves rustled with a wind that ran sharply through
them.
" I felt a drop upon my foot. It rains ! " cried Kitty, out
of the swing, coming back from a long flight.
Allard caught the chair-frame, and ran after it as it swept
on in a fresh vibration, bringing it back with him to a stop.
The two girls slid out, and we all started for the house. Be-
fore we got there, there came a streak of quick flame across
the darkness, and a peal of near thunder smote the air.
Great drops began to fall. A cloud had rushed up out of the
hot south-west, where flickers of heat-lightning had been pl:rv-
ing, and hung above us ; only the heavy border rolled up
now, against the dim-lighted east. Just as we sprang upon
the bank, somebody shut the hall door. The} r were pulling
clown sashes hastily, all around, inside, and running up and
down as people do in a great, open house when a summer
storm comes up. Nobody thought of our being out. "Who-
ever came to the door saw no one on the broad porch or steps,
and there it was fast with a catch-lock. Allard pulled the
bell, but the servants were upstairs shutting bedroom win-
dows now, and whoever else heard it may have fancied it a
summons only to some fresh point within.
" We might as well run round," he said ; and we all turned,
at first, to go with him. But the path among the trees,
around the whole front half part and wing, was something to
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 127
undertake with great drops driving faster, and the lightning
quivering overhead. I was afraid of the storm, and I
remembered my new silk dress. " Green would run," I had
heard Aunt Ildy say when it came home. So I stopped short,
and waited, standing close up in the shelter of the door. I
knew they would let me in whejn they got round.
- But they did not miss me at the first, when they all ran in
together from the terrace and mingled with the rest, thinking
that I of course had followed.
I had time, all alone, to see a fearful blaze, to hear a close
hissing, and a crash, a splintering down through something,
aud an explosion that enveloped all. I had time, after that,
to ring vehemently and to call, and to fling myself against the
door with a frantic feeling that I must, somehow, get behind
it, put it between me and the storm. And then Grandon
Cope opened it, and I fell forward, and he caught me up and
lifted me in.
" You poor child ! " he exclaimed, amazed and commiserat-
ing. " How in the name of wonder came you there? "
And after that he took care of me all the evening.
Augusta Hare was by his side as he opened the door. She
told the story afterward better than ever I could, and made
more of it. Her sensation of the shock, her belief that the
house itself was struck, the sudden pealing of the bell, and the
falling of something against the door, and their pulling me in,
half senseless, so that she thought at first glimpse of me that
I was killed : you saw the picture, as you always did, from
her stand-point, and she was better than the foreground. I
had my fright and my dim recollection of an instant alone
with the storm ; but I had nothing to tell. It was an old pop-
lar tree, across the road, that had been struck. It was the
first time in my life that I had felt how near the terrible ele-
menfc might come. It was not to be the last.
Grandon Cope took care of me all the evening. I don't
mean that he held me in his arms, or sat by my side ; Augusta
did these things ; but he came and went, with something t
show me, or a word to say that reassured me, every littic
while. There were other things to do, too. Other guests
128 HITHERTO :
were terrified ; were anxious about their drives home, and
their horses ; the storm continued, close and sharp about us,
for an hour. Amusement and conversation were given up ;
people only watched the keen returning flashes, and listened
for the hope of longer intervals between them and the rever-
berations that shook the building.
I shrank and trembled at every one, but I said nothing. I
was too strengthless with dread for a while to cry out as others
did, or to ask questions. It was the more thoughtful in Gran-
don Cope to soothe me so, and to help me gradually to a rea-
sonable sort of courage ; even, at last, to a positive enjoyment,
in what would else have stamped itself irretrievably upon my
3 r oung nerves as a terror never to be conquered.
" There is very little fear," he said, standing by the arm of
the sofa, as a long, fierce rattle died away ; " the biggest of
us only furnishes six feet or so of conducting power ; it will al-
ways get hold of something better when it can. Just see that
you don't make yourself a link in a chain ; that is all you have
to do."
If he had said there was no danger, it would not have com-
forted me at all ; but the " very little " and the reason why,
these helped me to my first long breath.
" I was up on the roof when it began ; I had my telescope
to bring down. I'm sorry our astronomy was spoiled to-
night."
. " Oh, I wanted so to look through the telescope ! " I cried,
remembering my anticipations, and that I must go home to-
morrow.
" There may be a chance yet. It's only a bit of a cloud in
the way. When you think of the stars waiting just the same
beyond, it seems a very little fizz, doesn't it?"
"Perhaps it does," I said. " But then, we are very little ;
ever so much littler, you know ; and we are right in the
fizz ! "
Mr. Cope laughed.
" Think of something yet less, then. Think of all the lit-
tle birds in their nests ; and how they will sing, hundreds of
them, when the sun comes up to-morrow morning."
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. *129
" Ah, that's a comfort," said I, my long breath going out
with a sigh. I did not think of it then, and I don't know
whether he did, but I have remembered it since ; that it was
the very comfort Christ gave us himself. " Not a sparrow
falleth ; " and " Ye are of more value than many sparrows."
He translated God's special words to us, written in his crea-
tion ; and they always stand.
"It is better to face it," Mr. Cope said, coming again by
and by. " Then you know where it really is, and what it is
about. When it's just overhead, you can't, of course ; but
that seldom comes, and never lasts long ; and it's no use to
sit fancying it overhead. Come this way with me, won't you?
We'll watch it off."
He led us Augusta came too into the library, and
pulled seats for us into the great bay-window. The blinds were
all open, I believe he had been in and set them so on purpose,
and away toward the north the mass of cloud was drifting, and
showed itself to us by rosy sheets and golden chainwork of
gorgeous lightnings that illumined and embroidered it.
" It is the purple lightning that is dangerous," Augusta
said. " When it grows red like that, it is passing over."
" The distance changes the effect. The close blaze is
livid and blinding. Look ! "
Overlapping edges of great banks of piled-up vapor were
grandly shown by sudden darting flames that seemed to run
along their curves, and bury themselves behind the bosom
of blackness. Back and forth, each to each, they flashed
their magnificent telegraphy, and between them rolled the
incessant voice of thunders. All around the mid-sky and the
horizon, settling momently lower, and wheeling northward, lay
the receding showers ; while here, about us, only a few great
drops, flashing from roof and branches, came from overhead.
Yet the bright gleams shone vivid across the night, and the
echoing peals swelled now and then to sudden crashes.
"I told you this was better," said Grandon Cope. "Half
of them in the other rooms think we are in the midst of it
still."
" You see the chief of the business lies between themselves,
9
130 HITHERTO :
after all," he said again, reaching his hand toward the heap-
ing clouds making their dazzling interchanges. " There is the
whole heaven to sweep through; and, at the worst, hundreds
of objects beside one's self in the little radius it may most
threaten."
" I never can realize that," said Augusta. " I forget other
houses and other people. I always feel, somehow, as if I and
the thunder-cloud had it all between us."
" It doesn't always do to centralize one's self," said Gran-
don Cope. lie looked at her as he spoke, in an earnest sort
of way I had seen in him with her before, already. He
seemed somehow to study Augusta Hare.
What she said of the thunder-cloud was true of her relation
with persons, with pursuits, with whatever of especial was
about or going on. She and this, whatever it might be, were
for the time the two centres, the foci. They had it all
between them. Life lay round her so, in a continual ellipse.
Society conformed itself in such-wise almost always where
she was. She and one other, her objective, perhaps a per-
son, perhaps only the amusement or the topic, would grad-
ually get their bearings, and the whole movement would
seem to swing about them. She would make a lecturer or a
preacher, preach or lecture to herself, before the utterance
was half through. The whole audience might not find this
out, but the speaker would, and a few about her would dis-
cover themselves less listening, than watching how she lis-
tened. I have said that this was her attitude, alwa}'s, with
events. I do not think she could possibly help it. It was a
magnetism a temperament. I do not know that she might
not readily have drawn a danger so, if a danger were the
thing .to be drawn. But if a rescue came, it would come to
her. She was always lucky in a lottery. She held high
trumps at whist, pairs royal at commerce, and threw the num-
bers that made the play at backgammon. There is a phi-
losophy and a law in these things.
" One gets more out of life so," she answered.
"Unless one can live large enough to feel from many
centres."
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 131
" I don't think one can be both diffusive and intense," said
she.
But Augusta Hare's intenseness was only at the self-point.
She was always one centre ; but the ellipse might wheel itself
bodily about, and embrace any new second that she chose, or
even that chanced.
I thought sometimes, afterward, that it might have been a
problem like this that Grandon Cope was studying.
It was not by obtrusiveness, or chatter, or assertion, that
Augusta did it ; she had infinite tact, and exquisite breeding.
To-night, for instance, she said so little ; and I myself was
apparently the object of Grandon Cope's solicitous interest ;
but he was helping her ; I was her charge ; she was quite taken
up with managing me beautifully, I being the thing just then
to be managed ; it was just the two centres and he revolving
about us.
After the guests had gone and we went upstairs, Augusta
walked down the long upper hall to the south-east window at
the end, that opened out on a little balcony. She pushed up
the sash, for the air had grown warm and heavy inside,
being shut up so during the storm, and stepped through.
She gave just one exclamation of a passionate delight.
" Oh, glorious ! " she cried, not suddenly, but with a slow,
strong dwelling on the words.
There was something in the tones of Augusta's voice of a
strange, peculiar quality. They were, 'in a fashion, ventrilo-
quial. She never shouted ; she never called to people loudly ;
she did not raise her utterance above the gentle musicalness
that should be a woman's ; but it penetrated, and went just
whither she would. It arrested you like the low bell-tinkle
of some ringing instrument, introduced into a full-crashing
orchestra ; there were twenty louder, but this was of itself, and
marked the pulse of the harmony. That was how it seemed
even in a buzzing crowd ; but when she chose to speak like
this, across a few chance words and laughs, such as were
sounding about the stair-head as the girls gathered there, it
shot straight through them all to the point she meant that it
should reach.
132 HITHEHTO:
Grandon Cope walked down the gallery too, and came out
there to her side.
" There she is," Augusta said, pointing straight away, where,
in a depth of midnight blue, between white rifts of clouds, at
about thirty degrees above the south-easterly horizon, hung the
moon, four days past her full ; and close beside her, an aste-
risk of glory to point her to men's eyes, the imperial planet ;
small, intense, with his sixteen hundred times' distance, but
mighty in his splendor to prevail across it all.
Augusta Hare and that picture in the heavens ; they had it
between them, now.
She stood still and gazed, while the chatting went on at the
stairway ; while one or two came and glanced over our shoul-
ders, I had gone out also, uttered some word of admira-
tion, and were content to return, since the little balcony
could not hold them all, and their jest or story was not done
with yet ; until they got inside their rooms that opened one
into another so that they might talk there half the night ; and
then she said :
" If the telescope were here now, Mr. Grandon ! "
"It would be better on the roof; the balcony is narrow,
and the window-sash is in the way ; would you mind coming
up?"
There was nothing to object to, of course ; it was only a
sort of study and observatory that he had up there ; we were
all to have gone up if the weather had been fine ; people were
still moving below, and would be ; lights were burning ; the
doors from the girls' rooms were not even shut upon the gal-
lery ; the evening was not over, only the party was, and it
was just near enough the coming night-stillness to be beautiful.
Augusta did not hesitate an instant ; if she had, from that
moment there would have been an objection ; she said at once
with the utmost simpleness :
" I should like it exceedingly ; and to show Annie, too ; for
she goes to-morrow."
" That is too soon," said Grandon Cope, kindly, and I took
what fell to my share, and went upstairs, quite happy, after
those two.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 133
It was beautiful to be a woman grown, though, like Augusta,
and to stand on a level with a man like Grandon Cope ; to
talk freely, and to dare to have opinions, and to get his ; I
with my fifteen-years-old brain and heart had my questions
and longings, and there had never been anybody in all my life
to meet and answer them.
" They were behind it all ; just as you said ! "
The words seemed only to escape Augusta, hardly to be ad-
dressed to him, as she stood there by the low roof-railing,
while he mounted and adjusted the instrument.
" Yes ; there is no mistake, in. all these wonderful heavens.
And the clouds know their places too, as well. I think we
needn't be afraid ! "
He seemed to say this last rather to me, in a half-playful
way, but Augusta answered it. With this strong, serious man,
she could be serious too ; less strong ; that was her charm,
doubtless.
" But terrible things happen. And we can't see what tlve
evil is for." So she touched the great, troubled, unanswered
question ; and looked to him as if he might haply solve it.
" It takes thousands of years records to prove the compensa-
tion for disturbance yonder," Grandon Cope replied, with his
face toward the stars. " God works at an infinite diagram."
It was like a thought that had come to him so in his daily
pursuit and research that it was quite familiar. He spoke
without a change of manner, and the next moment he turned
to me, as I stood waiting eager ly by his side.
" I think you'll have it now. Look here."
I knelt down on a cushion he had brought, and looked, and
saw. Congealed shapes and wonders ; frost-work, or molten
work, or some strange, unknown, luminous matter, caught
and arrested in a thousand midway forms ; a world, seen just
near and far. enough to show its whole rough idea and outline ;
its finish and detail beyond our vision, or yet to come ; it
made me think of glowing, unshaped metal from a forge ; it
was like seeing a piece of God's work on his anvil.
And then Mr. Cope just touched his finger to the tube, with
hardly the pressure of a breath, and lo ! the disk changed ;
134 HITHERTO:
the lustrous mass swept suddenly from the field, leaving to
sight only a jagged curve and gleaming points ; and I saw,
white, and round, and infinitely far, a drop, as it were, not
of flame, but its essence, a something clear like a sun, and
compact like a pure and perfect thought, the planet poised in
ether ; firm in the grasp of awful force, still in the eternal rush
and fall of its tremendous motions.
What I knew and what I saw put themselves together so,
and showed me this.
" The satellites cannot be seen, of course," said Augusta,
coining to take my place as I moved away, like one who has
no right to linger, being presented to majesty.
Her words seemed trivial, somehow.
" No," Grandon answered. " He is like some great prince
from a far kingdom, laying aside his retinue and state
in courtesy to the little queen whom he salutes to night."
I could see Augusta's smile in the moonlight. It pleased
her, this readiness and grace. This was what passed current
in the world, and bought there what it would.
She valued him at once too little and too much. I saw it
then. She could not reckon his whole worth. She discounted,
as brokers do a foreign coin.
He shifted round the tube, and showed us other glories.
He pointed it low to the north-west, and found the golden locks
of Berenice, clustered stars of the fourth magnitude, faintly
traceable by the naked eye ; he wheeled a little southward, as
the summer heavens cleared, and brought us face to face with
white, resplendent Arcturus ; far southward still, and lo,
Altair, glittering between the wings of the Eagle ; eastward a
little to Delphinus, beautiful lozenge of four diamonds, and
Markab, flashing from the shoulder of the Flying Horse. He
showed us double stars, and bright shining nebulae, the dust
of which the worlds are born ; he made us note the various-
colored fires of different suns, red, golden, and pale blue.
He told us of the wonderful violet splendor of Sirius,. fairest
of all those far-off orbs, shining now upon the under-world, and
coming towards us with the morning ; of the double stars of
Orion; of Rigel that clasps his ankle, marking his stride
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 135
through heaven, and Betelgeuse that sits upon his shoulder,
an epaulet of pride ; of the Pleiades and Aldebaran, magnifi-
cent in the Bull ; and it was midnight, and Capella shone on
the north-eastern rirn of the now cloudless blue, before we be-
thought us, and went down.
The girls were laughing still, and the servants' steps yet
sounded in the lower rooms ; but in half an hour more the
house was still, and I was falling into strange dreams ; of
Augusta Hare and Grandon Cope walking with winged feet
among the constellations, and of myself, wistful and wonder-
ing, looking up at them from beneath.
136 HITHERTO :
CHAPTER XI.
WHAT A VOICE TELLS.
OF HOPE DEVINE.
SHE was only washing dishes in a kitchen sink ; they were
heaped all around her, and the great pan steamed in the
middle ; she had a long towel over her arm, and her hands
moved swiftly to and fro, dropping cups and saucers deftly
into the scalding water, and catching them out by the edges
that she tipped toward her with her mop-stick ; swirling the
cleansing suds around and within them almost by the same
movement, and then transferring them to the comforting folds
of the soft, coarse linen out of which they came instantly,
glittering, and dropped with a single ringing touch, no clat-
ter, each to its own polished pile upon the white, dry table
at the side.
Only washing dishes, Hope Devine ; but doing it, as she
did all things else, and as nobody else did anything. No
bigger thing sat tilting upon a smaller ; no crumbs and frag-
ments, crushed and smeared together, made the work re-
pulsive ; there was a magnetism of order in what she touched,
and a visible tending toward completion ; you could see
through it, standing by ; she saw through it, by an instinct,
from the beginning. So no work ever looked hard or hopeless
to her, or where she set her hand. She was quick to see not
only into things, but on to wh'at they were to be ; if you were to
put her faculty into a single word that should betray its
secret, you would call it onsight.
She was therefore never discouraged ; washing dishes, or
living her life ; she never stopped short in the middle, balked
by difficulty or default. She made things do ; there was al-
A STOUT OF YESTERDAYS. 137
ways enough; it " came out" or it "went in" somehow, as
she said, and meant it should. ; by the pure force of will, Mrs.
Hathaway thought sometimes. " I suppose you see it ; I
don't," she would say. Mrs. Hathaway thought " she had
never come across such a girl to learn in her life. She didn't
learn ; she just jumped at it."
" There's that sitting-room carpet," she told everybody.
" Why, there seemed to me to be yards of it good for nothing,
and not a scrap left like it except the piece laid down before
the fireplace, and a bit at the door. Hope stood in the middle,
and looked at it, after we'd spread it down. ' I see how it
goes,' said she. ' I don't believe you do, for it don't go,'
says I, half cross. ' Yes/ says she, right off, as spry and
pert as a peeping chicken. ' Look here ! You don't want
any under that great sideboard. That's a good breadth up
against the wall. Take it out and put it in the middle. Then
the worn-out piece in the middle (it was worn out, to be sure,
for it was a gi'eat hole, and no piece at all) can be cut aci*oss,
and the rest put each way from the sideboard. Then those
two ends by the doors can be taken off ; and the rug pieces
matched on ; and there's enough good along the selvages
in the old ends to make out that narrow strip against the
hearth that's ragged. You'll see ! ' So I just let her go to
work, and I helped her rip, and cut, and match, and catch-
stitch, and darn ; and it fairly flew together ; seemed as if
every piece knew where 'twas wanted ; and she sat laughing,
and telling some fairy tale about birds' feathers of every color
and kind that sorted themselves in heaps and were ready in
no time, and by night we'd a bran-new carpet out of those
rags. She sees through a day's work, or a week's, just so ;
and 'tisn't so much her moving quick that does it, as a kind
of faith, the mustard-seed kind, I truly believe. It's like
turning a stocking ; she puts her hand in at a Monday
morning and catches a Saturday night by the heel, and pulls
it through, and there it is ! "
She was only washing dishes ; but there was the sort of
pleasure in seeing her do it, that there is in watching a pian-
ist's fingers, touching always, and so swiftly, the right keys ;
138 HITHERTO:
or an artist, laying his pencil here or there, leaving firm lines
and just shadows ; or any other sure and dexterous thing that
is done, in art or industry, or for a beauty. I think the sound
or sight that is born of the work is only the record that it
leaves ; it is the achieving that we think of secretly ; the touch
of faith and onsight.
Richard Hathaway came and stood in the doorway, looking
at her.
" I like to see you work, Hope," said he.
Hope worked on, with a smile lightening and lingering upon
her face ; and a little color that came with it warming her
cheek ; as if a sun-ray had streamed in and smitten her.
" I'm going up to Longmead this afternoon," he said again,
" to drive back the' new horse. It's a grand, pleasant day.
Wouldn't you like to go ? "
Richard Hathaway never felt a pleasantness that he did
not seek to share with somebody.
" Certain," said Hope, in a quaint, happy, little incorrect
way she had of speaking. Out of her books, and from daily
intercourse with plain, imprecise people, she had gathered an
odd mixture of cultured and- uncultured speech, -that per-
haps expressed what she was, better than any more consistent
style could have done.
" Certain I should. And it's good of you, Richard."
These were her thanks. Uttered very much as if it were
good of him of course, and for unnumbered times, and hardly
need be said ; as we say other thanks, perhaps. But the sun-
shine deepened rosier up her cheeks, and glanced in her eyes.
like light through a clear amber wine ; flushed and glanced
still, after Richard had gone away again.
Hope was seventeen, now. Five years she had lived with
the Hathaways. Martha went and came, in this time ; up the
country to an invalid sister, helping her " fix up the children,
and see to David Henry's clothes ; " or " lifting them along
through haying-time," or a "spring-cleaning;" home again
for a " winter spell," or to do the June butter-making. Mrs.
Hathaway could always spare her best just when she wanted
to go, and was " proper glad " to see her back, because of
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 139
something that was just afoot at that time. And in this
household where all things chanced " as well as not," and
usually better, Hope's sunny nature fitted itself in with other
bright things, and shone on ; and she pulled her Saturday
nights through from her Monday mornings, and the two ends
met, and the life was rounded, and its work complete, piece
by piece, as it went on.
She lived by weeks and days ; for doing and for having
what she could see ; she did not trouble herself about the
years ; she never tried to pull them through.
"What if Mrs. Hathaway should die?" Other people
said this, speaking of Hope and of her home at the Farm ; but
it never crossed her thought. " Or if Richard " people
speculated about him too, still, though he was seven and
twenty, and pretty Lucy Kilham was married and gone out to
Ohio, long ago ; but Hope never did ; she just let the sunshine
touch her as it came, and flushed and ripened under it like
a peach in a south shelter. If she ever thought of what she
had not, it was as of a great reserve out of which all good
might come ; not as of a wealth withheld.
" Hope lives in the middle of her pasture," said Richard
Hathaway of her once. " She doesn't go fretting her neck
over the fence."
Old Putterkoo went comfortably jogging along over the
Hill Road ; taking her own pace and time. Coming home,
there would be a young horse in the thills, and she would have
to keep up behind ; this, with an easy pull now, would be a
half day's work for her.
Hope sat in her linen cape and sun-bonnet, with a shawl on
her lap for the return drive, happy and simple like a child.
To be out in the fresh June air, full of growth and sunshine,
to loiter along between acres square of mellow ploughed
grounds rich with deep brown furrows full of seed, green
mowings where every lithe stem stood instinct with full,
springing, juicy life, and the sweet grass-smell was more
delicate than flowers, and vivid grain-fields glowing with
young green ; over slow rise of long hills down whose farther
sides they came into new beauty of open farms or green.
140 HITHERTO :
depths of woodpatches ; across singing brooks, through
them, now and then, for Putterkoo to wet her dusty hoofs,
and the clear water to plash up over hub and axle, and drip
with flash and tinkle from spoke and tire ; past still, lovely
glade-openings into shadows among old pines, where a foot-
path or a cart-track wound away into the wood-lots, and the
ground was blue with tender summer violets, all along the
barest road-side, where nothing was bare, but the wide way-
borders, crisp with short pasture-grass, were starred every-
where with delicate houstonias, white like snow or purple
with intenser life ; every step was a joy, every breath a
leaping growth of soul and body in God's bountiful world of
light and fragrance.
" Are you afraid of Pitch Hill, Hope ?" I brought you round
this way for the prospect. Such a day as this, you'll see over
three counties. There " and he pointed with his whip-
lash " over that crown you'll get it."
Straight before them lifted the long ridge up whose sides
they had been winding, with green turf-rim, and gray boulders
marking the sky-line close above, that should widen out pres-
ently with a burst and take in a sweep of a hundred miles.
Hope was looking down, and along her side the Avay. The
blue wild geranium grew in heaping clusters hard by where
the wheels ran. Along a mossy old fence sprang a striped
squirrel, sitting quizzically upon each post as he came to it,
for a flash of time, and then darting on. A bobolink, with
his pied clown costume and his gay chatter, cracking some
bird-joke, swung up and down on a last year's golden-rod,
near where his mate, doubtless, brooded her eggs. All these
things came in the near range of Hope's vision, and the sum-
mer tenderness and bounty held them all.
" Every inch of it is beautiful," she said, answering Richard
Hathaway's talk of three counties. " See there, and there,
and there ! "
Richard dropped the reins upon-her hands, without stopping
the horse, and sprang out over the wheel. He gathered hand-
fuls of blue geraniums, with two or three quick clutches, sprang
in again, and laid them in her lap.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 141
Hope looked up and thanked him, with the child-happiness
brimming in her face.
" You make the most of it all, as you go, Hope. You aint
in any hurry for the top."
Hope laughed. " That would be botching," said she.
"Botching?"
" Yes ; as the little children do their patchwork. Hurrying
to the end of the seam and not minding the little stitches.
Then the whole seam is good for nothing, you see."
Richard Hathaway sat still, and began to whistle. It put
things in his head. Hope's words were apt to. The things
in his head were not words, only glimpses. They did not
come often to what he could utter back. But they were there ;
glimpses of years, now, that people botched, looking for ends
and new openings, and missing the wayside sufficiency and
joy. Something vaguely reminded him of Anstiss Dolbeare,
looking for things beyond, reaching on, with a pain, and a far
sight, not able to be quite content. If he had gathered blue
geraniums for her, would her face have been full, like Hope's?
" How I like the little birch-trees ! " Hope exclaimed.
" Every small leaf seems so glad. The others are in great
heaps, grand against the sky. But the sunshine and the wind
get in all around every one of these, and they all dance and
shine, on their own bits of stems."
She talked on, never thinking that she did think, or that
she spoke. The current of beauty ran through her as it ran
through all. Richard said nothing, and she missed nothing
that he should have said. Was he not there, also, with/ it
all?
Hope Devine was happy. Her blessed temperament was in
direct line and relation with all sweet electric influences.
Richard Hathaway yearned for the other nature, high and gen-
tle and tender also, but sad with a hard repression, restless
with unanswered desire. He had known it and pitied it, so,
all through his life, and had been trying, in his way, to make
up to it what it lacked. And he knew there was some-
thing that he could not give it ; something it would never
be quite at peace without. He knew it all, and she herself
142 HITHERTO:
knew not how well he knew. His large heart was full of a
mute understanding, and a longing for himself and her. And
to her he seemed but simple, kind, uncomprehending.
This was the Silent Side.
Going on, always, along with her own life, feeling its im-
pulses, asking the same questions, humbly, mutely ; not able
to turn round upon her from a height, and hold down strong
hands to lift her up.
When do we lift each other up.? Must we gain a height
first, or can we reach up our feebleness together to the Hands
that do offer us a mighty help from on high?
Counterparts? Affinities? "We may go looking for them,
and we may chance, some of us, to think we find them ; but
the tender patience of human souls in a common need is the
true affinity ; and God has given humanity its one Comple-
ment in his Son.
Austiss Dolbeare did not know ; Richard Hathaway could
not tell ; so the prose of her life went on, and herein a silence
covered over with a plain, unfigured living, lay the syllables
that might have filled the measure and made it musical with
rhyme. In the kingdom of heaven, these harmonies utter
themselves all the while that we are ignorantly jangling and
missing them here. Some time, when we wake to them, they
shall sweep over the soul in tears.
" I wish we had Anstiss Dolbeare at the Farm this June
weather," he said to Hope, who knew nothing of the hidden
links that joined the thought of her with what they had been
saying of the birch leaves, and the blue geraniums, and the
wayside pleasantness, but supposed that quite a new subject
had suggested itself to Richard. Underground currents and
apparent gaps ! If they could be traced and bridged with
their secret continuities ! Histories write themselves out all
around us, with only a few words in heart cipher here and
there, that we cannot read to make them plain.
" She ought to be here to go strawberrying on Red Hill,"
Hope answered.
Hope was as true as she was strong. She had" a little im-
perceptible pause with herself before she made this answer ;
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 143
and, making it, she spoke precisely her feelings, and no more.
It was not, " I wish so too," or " Oh, if she could ! " but " She
ought to be."
And yet Hope did not wish, actually, otherwise ; Anstiss
Dolbeare had been many a time at the Farm since the day that
Hope had stood on the wharf at New Oxford, and Richard
Hathaway had come, for her to take her away into her new
life, and felt as if he had picked up a sunbeam ; and the girls
were friends. Real friends ; for Anstiss was of too earnest
and seeking a nature, and Hope too frank and genuine, for
them to be anything at all to each other, unless this ; but
somehow Hope felt herself at hard work when Anstiss came
and stayed. There was a something here to be made out,
pieced together, " made to go," that was worse than the old
carpet. In her own life, Hope could deal with the elements,
and see her way through, in her happy fashion, bit by bit,
which was all that she wanted ; inert material, circumstance,
fell to her bright will ; but here was the antagonism of utterly
different temperament, unabsorbent, often, of the sweet cheer
of hers ; unperceptive, sometimes, of the whole good that
there might be for itself.
Hope did not know just what it was ; she felt, with her nice
instinct, that there was a something to be adjusted ; and as if
her little office in the grand economy were just the instant
righting of all the atoms about her, she could not be at peace
with their disturbed polarity. There was some uncoinpre-
hended sense, too, of dim loss and trouble to herself; in her-
self, rather ; she was too unselfish to be able to look at it ob-
jectively ; but the full, free joy of her life got a little stray
ache into it somehow, she could not tell how ; she could
scarcely tell where she felt it. Some people lose and suffer,
even unto the end, without knowing anything, but that, as
Mrs. Gradgrind would have said, " there was a pain some-
where" in the world, and it might be possible that it was
theirs.
At nineteen, all the strong, unsatisfied longings of the child had
grown, with Anstiss Dolbeare, into the passionate striving and
demand of the woman's nature. And the old life was round her
144 HITHERTO :
still. Its contradictions, its half opportunities, its withhold-
ings, its snatcbings away. An unseen beauty and wealth lay,
as well, about her very feet, if she would only stoop or kneel
to find it. But lifting her face up always in a far-asking and
importunate prayer, she set, as it were, her tread upon it, and
passed on in her pain, telling herself, always, her half the
story ; saying over the old, rough lines of life, unrecognizing
their hint of a grand, beautiful measure, and calling them
hard prose.
Hope had a vague suggestion in herself of the unfound
rhymes. Only she could not rhj'ine for another. And the
strange jangle meddled with her own song.
So she said onty, " She ought to be here." The June blessed-
ness and Anstiss Dolbeare, these " ought " to come together.
Ah, the old, homely proverb about the horse and the water!
You may plunge a soul into heaven itself, and the pores of
its being may be closed against the divine ether.
Anstiss Dolbeare was stirred and kindled, as always, by all
beautiful things ; stirred, but not satisfied ; only reminded,
continually, of that which might be and was not. Spiritual
far-sight was her disease. Just a touch of nryopy is a safer
and a happier thing. That cures as one grows old ; the other
aggravates as the lenses flatten, till the lines of light fall wide,
and there is blankness. ,
" We'll ask her out ; we'll go for her in the new wagon with
Swallow, you and I." Richard almost always drew Hope in-
to such plans, in these days ; he was shy of asking Anstiss, us
he used to, to go off with him alone.
He stopped the horse on the top of Pitch Hill, as he spoke ;
a swift afternoon breeze met them, and passed them by over
the brow ; all the rich breath of the fields and forests and
gardens was in it, borne up here out of a wide champaign
over which summer was bursting, and sunlight had brooded
warm for hours.
It smote upon every sense, that magnificent outspread ;
such a great piece of the beautiful earth at once ; and such a
depth and width and glory of heaven reaching up above, and
gently down round about it !
* A STOKY OF YESTERDAYS. 145
Forests and river-glimpses; still, blue ponds lying in beauti-
ful curves ; spires white and slender, pointing only a little
way, after all, like a child's finger, into the fathomless ; houses
gathered together, here and there, a tiny sprinkle of human
life in the midst of the wide, rioting, redundant lesser life that
feeds it ; road-ways winding everywhere along the hill-sides
and across intervales, losing themselves in green shadows and
down valley-hollows ; no entire track traceable straight
through to anywhere, but bends and stretches and bits gleam-
ing out indicatively ; with now and then a wagon laboring
along, or a swifter vehicle rolling across the open, visible a
little way and then covered in again. Cattle in soft-sloping
pastures ; birds traversing the blue air ; a crow slow-flapping,
low, over a corn-field ; sounds of mingled songs and hums and
rustlings and rippliugs coming up from all in a pleasant far-
off, nameless stir.
Hope, who could take in so blessedly the little and close,
could seize, with such a burst as this, the width and grandeur
of its suggestion.
" O Richard ! " she cried out, simply. " Just think of the
whole of it ! Going all round and round the world ! "
She took the globe in her hands for an instant, mentally ;
faintly feeling the grand idea of it, and receiving a far-away
rapturous reflection of the Greatness that " taketh up the isles
as a very little thing."
" Some of it is water," said Richard, in his homely, practi-
cal way, half quietly comical in intention.
" Yes," said Hope, just as literal, and despising nothing,
but getting the further inspiration out of all. " And ships,
and islands, and icebergs, and storms ! And then countries
again, and people ! "
Why could not Richard, catching her large yet simple
thought, that enlarged his own, so that even his clumsiness
helped, not hindered it, have seen too how this girl's nature
fitted his, and how sufficiently each to the other they rounded
and satisfied and poised themselves in a perfect rest and peace
together ?
" You'd like to see the world, Hope 1 "
10
146 HITHERTO:
" Why, yes," she said, slowly, coming back, as it were,
to the recollection that it was not all open, actual, instant
vision. "But then," returning to her first insight and joy,
" I do see it ; my piece of it, you know ; and that's all that
anybody sees, at once. For the rest of it, you have to shut
your eyes."
Still, as in the childish days, she could " shut her eyes and
be there." I do not know that I can tell you of such a
character as Hope Devine's without seeming to make it con-
tradict itself. Such small content, and such large grasp ; but
they were there ; and I think they are the clear reflection in
-a healthy human soul of That which weighs the dust of the
earth in a balance, and spreads out the clouds as curtains ;
that peoples the water-drop with infinite life and walks with
its archangels among the stars.
They came winding slowly down, the whole way, into
Longmead ; and Richard cut an ash-branch and fastened it at
the wagon-side to shield Hope from the western sun, and
asked her little questions about her comfort, and cared for her
all along as he cared for everything that was in his hands ; and
Hope was so happy with his kindness, and with the beautiful
day, and the life and the light and the music and the odors of
it, and the thoughts that were things, that it never occurred
to her to be troubled lest all this were not with Richard, too,
in like manner, or beyond, what it was with her. Of course
it was. Had he not brought her here on purpose ?
They went round through the valleys, coming back ; Pitch
Hill was too much of an experiment with Swallow, and old
Putterkoo was glad of the soft brown soil of the low land
. under her hoofs, after the cling and scramble among the
rough stones and the hot gravel of the water-washed and
sun-blazed road of the heights.
They skimmed along, with the swift fresh horse, and Put-
terkoo got her old mettle up, following, with no weight to
carry ; her white nose was cosily over the wagon-back behind
their shoulders. Under the cool willows beside the running
water ; in the air damp and sweet with the meadow moistures ;
with the light of the low sun touching and tinging all things
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 147
sidewise, and the lowing of cattle at their yard-bars, and the
faint chitter of birds settling to their nests foretelling and
forefeeling stillness and rest after the long summer-day of
life and labor.
Hope thought of this ride years after, when things had hap-
pened that she dated from that night.
Into the wide, shady village street of Broadfields, and by
the church green ; down past the thinning dwellings, out be-
tween open grounds again ; over the brook and through the
edge of woods that lay across the road, and up again to the
cheery house-yard and the door wide open to the sunset.
Anstiss Dolbeare in a white cambric gown, and a black silk
mantle, sat beside Mrs. Hathaway on the oaken sill. From
her fair hair gathered back in soft curves from her forehead,
and around the head set with a peculiar grace upon the shoul-
ders, down to the little foot that lay in a close, laced black
morocco shoe upon the great granite doorstone, she was " a
lady, every inch," as the people say. Sweet, still, refined ;
the eager nature burning only in the deep gray eyes that with
their strai^fct, dark line of brow and the defining of close
lashes, also dark, made a singular combination with the soft
shade of the brown hair.
She sat there with his mother, waiting, while Richard drove
up. Hope felt him give a little start, seeing her at the first
as they turned in from the road ; and the throb that sprang
out of his heart shot a winding vein into relief upon his tem-
ple, and there wasf a sudden glow out of his eyes. This is
the way a strong man blushes ; and it means, with all the
added force of the man's nature, what a woman means when
she flushes like a rose.
" I have come here for a rest," said Anstiss Dolbeare,
standing up and reaching out her hand to him.
Richard Hathaway held his young horse with one hand by
the bridle, and grasped hers with the other.
" We're right down glad to see you, Anstiss," was the
young farmer's hearty, common speech.
What could he say, but after this, his fashion? He was
too much a man to stand and blush there ; he gave her the
148 HITHERTO :
quick, generous welcome that he always had for her ; ht blun-
dered, perhaps, into one of his most rustic expressions, just
because he would so carefully have chosen the most beautiful
words if he could, and while his brain sought them in a sud-
den tumult, his lips spoke something that came without a
thought.
For the remainder, it kept silence ; but he heard his own
heart beating in his ears.
There was no tingle in Anstiss Dolbeare's nerves, and the
blood in her veins ran calm. So how should she catch the
sound of the tempest that only came to him ? She heard the
evening wind in the long elm-boughs, and she thought how
still it was, and how- she should find here the rest she had
come for.
Hope sprang down, while Eichard stood there with both
hands busy.
"Why did you do that?" he asked. "I was coming to
help you."
" Oh, I can help myself," she answered, brightly ; and then
she kissed Anstiss, and the two girls went in together.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 149
CHAPTER XII.
BLANK VERSE ; AND CLOVER.
THE SILENT SIDE.
THE third perception and the voice must still read on, and
tell a little of that which came next in the story of these lives
that learned their own story in separate 'halves.
And whence, by the way, arrives that intuition that we are
all conscious of while our fragmentary experience runs on,
and we feel how little we are comprehended and how little we
comprehend, and how small the time, and how poor the
power to explain or to make clear, of a something outside
of us that puts together the pieces ; before which we justify
ourselves, and finish word and deed that were broken off and
prevented, take back the thing unmeant, and turn our whole
selves toward a new light that shows us other than the world
sees ? In the sense of which we find dim consolation, reas-
surance, hope?
Side by side with this unknown apprehension, identifying
himself, however humbly, with it, must the dealer with
thought and life that might be or that may have been, put
himself, and look, and listen. For that apprehension is, if in
One only ; it is the relation God himself holds to every human
soul. It is no light thing, then, but a solemn, to make one's
self an insight and a voice, to see and to tell such things.
As Hope Devine said in her fanciful childhood, who knows if
" we can see anything that isn't there ? "
Hope and Anstiss slept together. Anstiss liked this when
she stayed at the Farm ; it gave less trouble, and Hope was a
a part of the rest for which she came. She leaned upon her
strength, instinctively ; she got the help, the comfort ; Hope,
150 . HITHERTO:
giving it, and because she gave it heartily, felt the strain, as
we have seen.
So they sat and talked, as girls do, on their bedside ; pull-
ing the combs and pins out of their hair, and loosening their
garments ; putting off the real undressing, the brushing and
the pinning up ; when they began to do this they would begin
to pin themselves up again into their individuality, also ; it is
this unbending from the outer restraints that has much to do
with the setting free of confidence.
" I can't tell what it is that Aunt Ildy wants," said Anstiss,
hanging hairpins carefully one by one over the teeth of the
shell comb she held horizontally, as if that were precisely the
important thing in the world to be done, and the doing it was
what puzzled her. " I think she is fond of me in her way,
and would rather I should come to good than otherwise ; and
yet she has thought it her duty for so many years to prevent
me from having my want or my way in anything, that she
can't keep her hands off now. She's proud to have me
noticed ; she sets it all down to the Chisms ; she gets her best
china out, and asks Allard Cope to stay to tea, and then she
snubs him by way of taking me down, when he talks to me ;
for fear I shall feel of consequence, and it shouldn't be good
for me ; and she tells me the next day that it all means noth-
ing ; I needn't imagine it does ; he hasn't many other places
about here to go to, and he's got a way of dropping in to talk
to Uncle Roj'le. And then again, if he stays away, she hints
something about off and on, and that nothing of that sort will
answer with the Chisms, and she should think it was my busi-
ness to understand what he was about, and my own mind, and
to give him to know one thing or the other;, but then she
never did suppose there was anything in it ; and it always
sounds like ' How should there be ? ' and a kind of taunt flung
at me. I feel sometimes as if I could do anything to get out
of such a life, and^o show Aunt Ildy Oh, I'm disgusted
with it all ! I can't have a friend, nor a pleasantness ; and
she tires me, she tires me so, Hope ! "
There was a life-long weariness in Anstiss' voice ; and it
dropped away, and she ended, as if so she gave all up, and
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 151
DA)
would let it fall away from her if she could, only that it still
clung and dragged.
This wasapvhat tired Hope too.
But when she could not just see the beginning of a righting,
she insisted upon the end that was to be.
" It will all come out, somehow. It has got to, you know.
Things always do. They can't stay up in arms."
That was how she felt with an old carpet that lay in a heap,
or a dress ripped up into pieces.
"If you care, yourself "and here she stopped. Hope
would by no means ask for the most intimate confidence of all.
" I don't know. Sometimes I think I don't care for any-
thing. How can I tell how things might be ? They have no
business to be p"ut into my head, beforehand. I'm ashamed ;
ashamed of being a woman, Hope Devine, and of having it
thought that I am standing ready to be asked ! "
She spoke impetuously, bitterly ; wronged in her most
sacred reserve, and driven to speak of what she would not
have allowed herself to know, until another, who should have
the right, should have come to her and bid her search, to give
him answer.
" She spoils it all, whatever it might be. She would make
it a cheat, even if it might have been the truth. I never
wanted anybody to come and say ' You are going to have some-
thing given you,' even if they knew. I felt as if I had stolen
and used and defaced it secretly, before the time, and as if my
thanks would be hypocrisy, because that I had helped myself
already, I have come here to get away, and to have a rest."
" Well, we'll rest you. That is the best thing. It's good
to' put a bother away over night. It all straightens out in the
morning."
" I wish I belonged here. Or at the Copes. Anywhere that
I could just be. Then I suppose I should live my life, what-
ever it was. But Aunt Ildy pokes at my roots so."
"People can't do, after all, anything except what they're
set to. Make it out, I mean, unless it is meant. It's the
transplanting that is to come next, maybe, for you, and then,
you see^you'll flourish ! "
152 HITHERTO:
Hope did not begin to say this until she had waited, in a
half-troubled silence, for a minute or two. Then it came, and
she brightened up, and gave it right out in her peg^liar quick
fashion ; quite sure of it, as if she had thought it over and
over, long ago, and proved it by a full experience. She ended
with a little jubilance ; and her face turned up at Austiss, sud-
denly, with a light in it like an ecstasy of promise.
" Your face is like a sky-full of stars when you look so,
Hope," said Anstiss.
Hope laughed. " That's poetry," said she.
" You made it, if it is," said Anstiss.
" Well, perhaps," Hope rejoined, merrily. " It don't take
much to make poetry, after all. "Why, everything is poetry ! "
" Blank verse, a good deal of it," the other answered, fall-
ing back into her weary way.
" Blank verse?"
" Yes ; the verse without a rhyme ; long, heavy lines, just
doled out in a measure, and every one beginning with a capital
letter, just to make you catch your breath and think you're
going to begin again."
" Why, that's like * Paradise Lost.' That's what the hero-
stories are told in ! "
" I'm afraid I'm not heroic," said Anstiss. " And I'd as
lief my life wouldn't try to be an epic."
" Anstiss, dear, I'd read it, and make it grand, whatever it
is ! I wouldn't skip, either. It all belongs ; and the coming
out'll be splendid I It always is you know."
" I don't know. Half the time they're all killed off at the
end, aren't they ? "
" Well ! " said Hope, in her very cheeriest tone.
"Well?" repeated Anstiss, half angrily.
" Then you do begin again, don't you ? And then " a sort
of glorious earnestness came into her shining eyes, " there's
the hero-story finished ! "
That word of hers silenced them in a strange, unlooked-for
way. Thej had touched on unexpected depths in their talk,
begun in mere girl-fashion. Perhaps there came a thought of
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 153
the world's great Hero-story ; of Him who bore its utmost
strain and agony, and said that of it, It is finished !
They left off talking ; they put awa'y their things and rolled
up their hair. Anstiss went and looked out at the window, in
a stillness, for some minutes ; Hope went straight and simply
to the bedside, in her white night-dress, and knelt down.
After that, they kissed each other, and got into bed, and the
room was still.
Richard set the blinds open and drew the curtains wide in
his east windows, before he went to sleep that night. He
meant to be up in the early morning and off to Red Hill, to
see if strawberries were ripe. So he got his three-mile walk,
and his certainty ; finding the wild fruit lying in patient per-
fectuess under its green leaves, on the far-off slope, doing its
best with flashing crimson and rich perfume to advertise fairly
that it was there ; and he brought back his news, and his sturdy
appetite and sound cheeriness of temper, to his mother's plen-
tiful breakfast, and the whole room and everything there was
pleasanter from the minute he came in.
Here was not a man to hang about in a listless love, capa-
ble of but one weak thing ; he would be out on his farm pres-
ently, among his men and his oxen, and the smell of brown
earth would be in his nostrils, and the sunlight penetrating
him through and through, filling him with hearty vitality and
grand manly power ; and whatever was in him would be ex-
panding itself to the great round of a far, breezy horizon, and
growing pure and clear under the searchiag light and sifting
winds of the full, wide out-of-doors that he lived and wrought
in? Something healthy, and strong, and worth having comes
to a woman out of a heart like his, fed out of a nature and a
life like that. A great brain and great book-feeding may be
fine things ; they are ; but alone, away from other feeding,
they%re the poorer of the two. There is great meaning in that
word "heartiness." The soul does not lie in a point ; it
fills the whole human creature. A child, or a complete,
healthful man or woman, will lay the hand on the breathing
bosom to express its being and its feeling ; it is large and
154 HITHERTO:
palpitant there, and thence it thrills to the very finger-ends ;
one with only a brain and a marrow will be aware but of a
buzzing and a spinning in the skull.. A bee in the bonnet,
oftentimes, as likely as not.
It was a whole-hearted man who, as we know now, loved
Anstiss Dolbeare.
For her, she got up this morning into a new, free, joyous
existence. She had slept off the weariness of her latest
vexations, and no real passion, or suffering, or life-questioning
had as yet laid such vital hold of her that it coujd filter itself
through her rest and her dreams, and tincture her new day.
She " began again " at Broadfields, always ; here it seemed,
somehow, as if the sun itself had never risen before, but had
just been made.
She came downstairs, singing ; she was full of a readiness
to receive blessedly ; the old life was all behind the night,
thrust and. huddled away there, like a last year's garment
which one ma}' never want again. She was glad when Rich-
ard told them of the strawberry plenty ; they would go in the
cool of the afternoon ; she felt as if she could pick a bushel.
Hope almost wondered at her. She herself never had such
ups and downs ; she rested in a clear mid-atmosphere, poised
on constant wings of a strong, blithe confidence. But she was
glad for Anstiss that she could sing so.
Everything was satisfying ; everything was amusing ; she
was ready to work and to plan pleasure ; to sing and to
laugh.
All that happened touched some spring.
She came running to Hope in the back kitchen where she
was hanging up her tin pans.
" There's such a woman in the sitting-room ! Who is she,
Hope ? saying something to Mrs. Hathaway about a pasture
and a fence. Her nose is six inches long, and her mouth is
under her chin, and she talks with her elbows ! Putff the
stops, I mean, and the italics, and the dashes, so !
' Lay in' consider'ble butter down this June, Miss Hathaway ? ' ' :
and Anstiss jerked one elbow up towards Hope's face, " that's
the butter, and the interrogation point. ' You're a master
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 155
hand at dairy-work allus was ! ' ' Poking sidewise at her
with the other, and turning the end of the poke up in the air,
"that's emphasis, and exclamation. And so she goes on.
' Hired gals precious little account, hey ? ' with a dash back-
ward I can'i do it for the ' precious,' and a flourish round
into her side again for the ' hey ! ' Why, who ever saw such
a woman ? Where does she come from ? "
" From Red Hill way," said Hope. " If we stop at her house
to-night she'll give us spruce beer that she makes herself, with
all sorts of woods-flavors in it. She lives all alone there, ex-
cept when she goes away sometimes to nurse sick people."
" We'll stop then. I should like the beer ; but it can't be
equal to the elbows. I must go back. Can't lose it, you see ! "
And Anstiss put her head down till she seemed to talk from
under her chin, and leaned toward Hope, nodding and thrust-
ing up her elbow at her again with a nudge and a sweep that
expressed italics and admirations, and a dozen unspoken
words in parenthesis. k ' It's the greatest fun I ever saw."
Hope thought how things must have chafed upon a nature
that could be merry like this, before they could make it bitter,
and hopeless, and sad, like last night ; and she caught, too, a
glimpse of the truth, that as yet it was purely outside chafing ;
the inmost vitality was safe, and might yet leap out and rejoice.
So she spread her clean kitchen towels on the line in the sun,
and began to sing too.
" If she can just be let alone," she thought, " and have
things come to her."
They drove over to the foot of Bed Hill in the open wagon,
that afternoon ; let down some pasture bars, and followed a
cart-track over the short, dry, mossy turf, till, down a little
bend between the roots of the great land-swell, they came into
a shade of oaks and upon one of those little old farm-houses,
black with unpainted age, having a one story upright in front
and a long stretch of roof behind that a child could run up and
down on, descending gently from the ridge-pole till it almost
kissed the ground. Under a roof like that, one thought of a
family of children as of chickens brooded under a wing.
Up to the very door-sill grew the short, green grass ; and
156 HITHERTO:
lilac-bushes peeped round the corners and looked ia at the
windows. There was a hop-vine growing up ene frame-post,
and swinging its tender budding sprays of delicate green, and
spreading its dark, rich leafage all along eaves and rafters
and down against the old shingled sides like a tapestry.
" This is Mrs. Cryke's," said Hope, and Richard pulled up
the horse at the doorway.
" I knew what you'd corne for," sounded, almost before they
saw ; " wait half a minute ; " and with this they perceived the
elbow first, coming out at them like a great caret, while Mrs.
Cryke poured foaming beer out of a full pitcher, as if she
knew what had been left out of their pleasure so far, and was
interlining it.
" I knew you couldn't get such beer nowhere else. There,
drink that; and aint it smackin' goofl?"
Between pitcher and mug, and question marks, and marks
of emphasis, both elbows were by this time working won-
drously, and good Mrs. Cryke was like the wooden man with
the flails on the weather-vane over Richard Hathaway's barn.
" It's like pine woods and fern-pastures and swamp pinks
and everything ! " cried Anstiss, giving back the mug.
" It's got everything in it ; everything that's good, and that
grows, almost!" and the mug was full again, though how,
goodness knows, for there was a nudge and a chuckle, and all
the accents, and the whole play and tone of gratified expres-
sion between those elbows and the things the hands held,
while she did it. A compliment fairly set the old lady flying.
" Well, here are some early marrow-fats that have got the
best of my field in 'em," said Richard Hathaway, pulling a
bag from under the seat, when they had all drunk of the
mountain essence. And if there's anything they haven't got
that they ought to have, you'll boil it into 'em, somehow."
And he tossed it out upon the grass.
"Well, I'm beholden to ye, I'm sure! You never come
empty-handed ; it's give and take, to treat you; and the take's
the biggest, by all odds ! ! "
The way she edged nearer and got among the wheels, and
reached up and illustrated, and pointed, and put double ex-
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 157
clamations at the end, would have been dangerous to those
active old bo^es of hers with any horse but Putterkoo in the
shafts, or driver less watchful than Richard at the reins. But
they got off safely, and left her vibrating and punctuating, and
calling out after them with a great Nota Bene prefix* to her
supplementary suggestion :
"You stop as you come back along, mind! You'll be
thirsty agin, then ! And there's more where that came from ! "
" She lives there all alone," said Richard, " since her brother
died ; except when she's nursing. And she gives away her
beer, and people come miles for it in the hot weather ; and she
gets the best of the farming for her brewing ; there's some-
thing grow.ing for her in everybody's lot."
" All alone?" repeated Anstiss. " "What if she should be
sick herself ? "
" Oh, she won't. She may die, some time ; I suppose she'll
have to ; but she never'll be sick. And if she should, she's
got a cat that knows enough to go for the doctor."
How the breeze, and the sunshine, and the fragrance stirred
together and poured down, a'nd up and around them ! How
the moss crushed pleasantly under the wheels, and the yellow
butterflies and the little brown ones that look as if they'd
kept their winter gowns on, swarmed among the blossoming
weeds, and how they smelled the strawberry patches afar off!
How happy it was to be here with Richard and Hope, and old
Putterkoo, a,nd the peace and overflowing of the summer !
How safe Anstiss felt, and how ^10 rested, and took in many
things that she could get nowhere 'else, as well as Mrs. Cryke's
beer !
What would she give for them ? Out of her life what had
she grown and brought ^jfk her of her best, to render back ?
Will he ask her, some time ? Ask her, offering her more ; all
of this, and greater, for her whole life long ? And will it be
enough ? *
He will not be in a hurry ; nobody will be in a hurry, here,
" to put things in her head ; " he will not search for words, or
for a time, to speak ; he has been silent a long while ; by and
by it will speak itself, perhaps, when he cannot help it ; in
158 HITHERTO :
some common, unpolished, unstudied word it -will come at last,
but with a great heart-burst behind it that shalljihrust it forth.
And it will fall as at her feet. Will she take it up and care
for it? In the great, full world of powers, and knowledges,
and possible JO3 T S and satisfyings, to what is she secretly reach-
ing ? What is at the spring-head of her restlessness that she
as yet but half knows, herself? Will she ever learn how it is
that not always beyond the stars, or beneath the deeps, are
the answers to life's dearest askings, but that the word and
the gift are nigh, even in the mouth and the heart that are
thirsting and beseeching ?
The}' left the horse under shady oaks, and walked on into
open pastures. Through a great patch of odorous sweet fern
that gave out its spicy breath as they passed across it, and
then upon a close turf again, overlaced everywhere with wild
strawberry-vines, and its pattern pronounced with bright red
clusters of ripe fruit, making a hill-side carpet of wonderful
wild beauty.
" Fruit right off the vines," in a garden even, is an approach
to perfection ; but out of an abundance like this, free and ex-
haustless, it is more ; we find out then, a part of the secret
that we had not thought of before ; it is not freshness, merely ;
it is the straight gift, the bounty for us; with no hand be-
tween ours and the First Giver's. This was in Richard
Hathaway's heart, silently and half aware ; making it beauti-
ful to take into his hand and give into hers ; the joy of Adam
in Eden, that every man r^eats as he may for the woman
whom he loves. The joy fr the woman is that there is this
second hand.
So they give and take lovers flowers, always, by an
instinct ; it is the first offering ; aujtfor the country dwellers,
there is this fruit-gathering ; they only know how beautiful it
is ; it is a part of speech added for them only. We live and act
in types, always ; we are learning, soothe short-hand of
heaven. Richard Hathaway heaped up sweet parables to-day
for Anstiss Dolbeare. The letters spelled strange words ; she
had no key, as yet; the rich ripeness and the fragrance and
A STOnr OF YESTERDAYS. 159
the beauty, stillness, kindness, and peace, were about
her ; these were all ; she was at rest and happy with these.
They walked all the way back, through the pasture and
woodland, to Mrs. Cryke's again ; Richard leading the horse.
When they came there they found somebody else before the
door. Mrs. Cryke and her elbows were pouring beer and
making punctuation for Allard Cope, who sat on his beautiful
black horse, so perfectly appointed ; handsome and ga}*, him-
self, in his summer riding-dress, with the flush of pleasant
exercise upon his cheeks, and an expectation shining in his
eyes.
Anstiss Dolbeare came up, in her blue and white gingham
dress, with its small white linen collar and cuffs, her sun-
bonnet of the same, made with pretty drawings and frills,
hanging back from her face like the calyx of a flower, and her
white willow basket, full of red berries and green leaves in her
hand.
He liked her just so, and she knew it ; she knew at once
that he had come all this way to find her ; she would have
supposed, a minute ago, if 3*011 had asked her, that he was in
New York ; but she understood it instantly. The Copes had
got home. Home, all the way from Europe, the mother and
Laura, and Kitty ; and Grandon, who had been away for
years. Allard and his father had gone to meet them on their
arrival ; they had all come to South Side, and he had been
over to Uncle Ro} T le's already, and had traced her here.
Richard Hathaway knew it too ; he could read faster than
he could speak, this man with a large, silent heart ; he was
silent, perhaps^ because he did read ; he was noble enough for
that, too. Anstiss should read, and compare, and learn her
own mind ; he could wait. He was noble enough not even to
cloud or change, jealously, meeting this rival to whom lie gave
the road ; meeting him, in the midst of a little happiness that
belonged quite to himself. No wonder that Anstiss inter-
preted none of his parables.
Allai^J Cope's straw hat was in his hand ; the buff leather
bridle hung loose about his horse's neck, whose head was
down among the sweet field grass, and whose long, wavy
160 ^HITHERTO:
mane touched its tops. His other hand took Anstiss Dol-
beare's and gave it a glad pressure ; then he swung himself
down, put his arm through the bridle-loop and stood beside
her*
He had always been the same ; blithe, frank, debonnair, and
honest, in his boy -liking up to his man-loving that it was
going to be ; from the day when he had pulled flowers for her
in his mother's garden and told Augusta Hare what a pretty
girl she was. What would Anstiss do between these two?
One way or the other, it would seem that her life must
brighten. Only they were such different ways ! Yet her as-
sociation had been alike with each, and as much with the
sphere of one as of the other. It had been the single thread
of melody played through the overture of her young years ;
taken up by two different instruments, at alternate times ; but
the one beautiful strain that made her glad when she caught
it, out from among notes that elsewhere confused themselves
in intricacies and dissonances that might be she supposed
they were all right to an ear which could recognize the
principle that grouped and ordered them, but that for her had
been so tiresome, such a pain. She could not feel, yet, the
richness of the inharmonic chords.
Now, for a short measure, they were struck together, and
in unison. For Richard Hathaway was just as kind, just as
careful, just as simple-friendly, as before. She liked sitting
by his side in the open wagon, with Hope Devine and the
strawberry-baskets behind. She was quite herself, with these,
away from Aunt Ildy's watching and comment. It was
pleasanter, so, talking with Allard Cope, as h$ rode upon her
other side ; and if there were a secret pride and gladness in
letting it be seen what else had come to her out of a world
so rich and full to some, if even she cared that his horse
and his dress and his bearing were all so perfect and elegant ;
that such a stamp of gentlemanhood was upon him, and that
with all this he came to her and found something congenial
in her, even though she wore a gingham dress and a^eun-bou-
net ; that he never minded that her gloves were off and her
finger-tips rosy wfth strawberry-picking ; if there were a little
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 161
triumph in the consciousness that she could be free and happy
with him, she knew him so well, and was so sure of what he
thought of her, was it very bad and unnatural in a girl of
nineteen, who had not begun to find out her own mind yet,
and who had only these few things to be glad and proud of,
things that had been the same for years ?
It was different when he stood talking with her afterward,
alone, in the little front garden by the fence, among the roses ;
holding his horse's bridle over the rails, putting off the good-
b} r and the going. The shy, restless feeling came over her
then, that she wished he would not stay so, and that the
others had not left her. Hope had gone into the house, Rich-
ard had driven down to the barn ; and Allard Cope would not
come in to tea, neither would he get on his horse and go*
home.
It was all very well up to a point like this ; she was not
quite ready to be even shyly glad of moments like these.
She was used to Allard Cope ; she was proud and glad of his
liking ; she wished, sometimes, as she had said to Hope
Devine, that she " belonged at the Copes ; " but she could
add " or here." She could not spare any of her friendships^
or pleasures ; but she would rather, since they were just what
they were, that they should stay so, for a while, at least.
She dreaded anything coming that must be . decisive ; she
never talked this over with herself, or apprehended definitely ;
,she was only vaguely divided between these sudden shri lik-
ings and her strong longings and leanings. Into Allard
Cope's life the life into which he might take somebody,
some time she looked, as into a paradise ; she was in love
with his mother, and the home atmosphere ; with himself,
apart, she did not quite know ; she did not want to ask her-
self, or to be asked.
But all this belongs to Anstiss Dolbeare's own remem-
brances ; she can tell us best ; what we came to look at here
was what she did not see and could not tell.
Richard Hathaway drove old Putterkoo down to the barn.
His day's pleasure had come and gone ; now there were
the cattle to feed, and the oats to be ineasrjpd for the horses,
11
162 HITHERTO:
and the bedding to be tossed down, and the mangers to fill.
And then, when orders had been given and all looked to and
done, and Putterkoo and Swallow had begun munching their
grain, he went and stood by the fence and looked over into
the three-acre clover-lot.
What did it tell him, this field of clustering trefoils and
white and purple blossoms ? Out of its bosom what comfort
of sweetness, or promise of bestowal and joy, came up- to him ?
Or what did he tell to it, leaning down with his arms along
the rail and his farmer's straw hat pulled low upon his fore-
head?
He and the late bees had it to themselves ; a swallow
skimmed over, perhaps, for an instant, and the wind swept
along the close pile of its dense leafage, stirring it in great
masses, and shaking incense up into the air.
Time to mow to-morrow. That was what he was thinking,
perhaps? Time to put the sharp scythe under the tender
green and the rose-purple, and the pure, sweet whiteness that
had been growing together all the earl}' summer-tide, and
crowding the whole field with beauty? There was no such
plover-patch as his for miles around. Hardly a stone in the
generous mellow earth beneath it. Full of heart and strength,
ready for any noble crop, and given, this }'ear, to lux-
ury of green tmd a wealth of flowers. He should not sow it
for next year in like manner. The plough must run under,
and the harrow be fretted across, and the sober grain must
go in.
The bees went home, the swallows were fluttering about
the barn-eaves ; the wind slept ; and the clover was still.
Richard Hathaway was thinking very definite!}' now, with his
head bent down upon his two hands joined together on the
rail.
" She shall never come here to be sorry for it. I'll never
ask her into that. I'll wait and see. She's here, and she
always will be ; the whole place is full of her. I'd like it to
be the only thing for her ; is that mean, I wonder? Thinking
it was, for so long, was what filled it up so to me. But if it
isn't, I can staudg^ide. I've got stamina enough for that."
A STPRY OF YESTERDAYS. 163
He got up straight with this, and pulled his hat off, and
lifted up his manly head. There were drops upon his brow,
and the twilight air was soft and cool.
"I can't talk much, maybe. But, God helping, I can hold
my tongue. And He knows, I guess, which it takes most of
a man to do. I don't think that field was wasted, planting
it so. It's been pleasant, and pretty, while it lasted, and it'll
mix rich and sweet with the hay. We'll cut it to-morrow."
The time of the clover-bloom was over ; the careless sweet-
ness was at an end. The scythe was to be put in.
Richard set his hat upon his head again, and walked away.
i do not believe he knew he had been reading himself another
parable ; nevertheless, he and the clover had had this to say
to each other.
The dew came down "and rested on the blossoms ; they were
baptized unto their death. For the man, he went home with
the sweat of a heart-struggle upon him. That, also, was a
chrism from Heaven.
" By the sweat of his brow, he shall eat bread."
And a man's bread is every word that proceedeth also out
of the mouth of God.
164 HITHERTO
CHAPTER XIII.
WHAT ANSTISS DOLBEAKE REMEMBERS.
ALLARD COPE.
IT was in the winter after I was eighteen that Allard Cope
began to come so much to Uncle Royle's. The family had
always been kind to me ; but, after all, their life and ours lay
differently, and there were long intervals of time when I saw
little or nothing of them.
Margaret Edgell was married. Hers was the first wedding
I had ever seen. What new mystery of beauty, and of a
strange, holy, separating blessedness was around her, and be-
tween her and us girls and all her old self and life, when she
stood there in the church with her white veil falling from her
head to her feet, enshrining her, and the minister said solemn
words, and they two bowed their heads, she and the tall,
handsome man beside her, and so took the solemnity upon
themselves and received the blessing ; when the organ sounded, '
and in the thrill and tremble of its music they moved softly .
down the aisle again, and he put her his wife in her
white cloud of pure, enfolding draperies, into the carriage,
the only real coach in New Oxford except the private equipa-
ges at South Side, and got in and sat down by her, and they
drove away.
Only to the Edgells' home again, at first ; there we saw them
again for an hour or two longer ; and then she went upstairs
and took off all the cloud and the mystery and the fair 'types
of her bridal consequence and insulation, and came down
really among us, in her simple dark silk dress and her shawl
and bonnet, to say good-by.
Still, there was the unseen sacredness ; the grandeur and
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 165
the mystery of the new relation ; I looked upon her as from
a sudden distance, though she kissed me, and her husband
shook me cordially by the hand, and they said I must come
some time and see them in Fairholm. There was something
so strange and beautiful and exciting to me in it ; it seized
and possessed me as the near touch of deep and living things
does seize and affect the young imagination. And there was
so little that came into the dull sameness of my life with any-
thing like the thrill of this ! .
I went home and made a silly speech at the tea-table. Out
of the fulness of feeling, and the awe at something far off and
yet close in a strange sympathy of possibility. I felt the re-
ality ; I spoke of the type.
" Oh, she did look so lovely, Aunt Ildy ! If ever I'm mar-
ried, I'll be married in church, and have a long veil like
l^rs ! "
"Married!" Aunt Ildy withered me. I was achiW; I had
no business to think of such things ; I'd better wait till I
was asked ; I wasn't worth asking ; I, married ! Preposter-
ous ; forward ; unseemly ! All this tingled through me with
her one word.
I colored all up, burningly. I felt as if I had said some
shameful thing. Yet only a year ago it would have been just
the same for Margaret Edgell ; and still, here it had come to
pass. Why was it so improper up to the very minute ? I was
only comforted to think that Uncle Royle had not come in.
What right had she to make me feel so mean, and so
ashamed? Afterward, it was the cause that I hardly dared to
ask my own of life, or to know when I had got it ; it put me
false ; it made me mistake great meanings. It took me a
long while, and it cost me pain ; worse, it pained nobler
lives than mine, before the years and God's light set me
straight and showed me clear.
I saw Margaret Holcombe a few months after ; only across
the way ; she had come just for the day to her father's, and
from my old window I looked up at hers, as in the childish
times, and saw her there.
Her pretty silk dress-filled up the low window-seat with its
166 HITHERTO:
shining folds and soft color. Her husband came in and laid a
little basket of some small, ripe fruit upon her lap. Then^she
laughed, and made room for him, and they two sat there
together, dipping their fingers among the stems, and dividing,
and eating, like happy children.
It was the old story. Everything was beautiful and happy,
even to a sublimity, over there. Here, I had the old inacces-
sible window-pane, and my chin stretched up to it, an'l my
mending-basket at my feet, just #s it was years ago.
I was not without self-chidings for my discontents. I was
not without glimpses of better things in life than havings or
doings, even then. That is, I knew the things were, and that
I ought to find them ; that God had given me my life, and the
place and the way of it ; and that if I was truly good, I should
be glad in him, and should not care. But I was not truly
good, yet. I only wanted to be. And I wanted help, so ! I
wanted some great, strong, kindly, loving soul to stand close
beside me ; a motherly soul, or a fatherly, it might have been ;
but I had missed that, and I was almost a woman now, and a
blind asking for something yet possible stirred within me. I
did not care particularly to sit and eat cherries in a pleasant
window ; that only signified something more. I would like to
share great sunrises, and solemn, beautiful sunsets ; deep
starlights and grand thoughts ; questions and knowledges ;
unspoken prayers, and griefs and joys ; to be always sure of
a hand in mine, and a thought above mine. I was only ask-
ing for what God only gives because he has first made every
human spirit to yearn for it.
The winter after I was eighteen, there was a change. I had
new amusements, 'and I saw more of the little world about
me.
I went to the great New Oxford ball, that they used to have
once a year, and that everybody went to ; the families from
South Side, and the tradesmen in the town : the large farmers,
with their wives and daughters, from the country miles about,
from Broadfields to Whiteacre. It was a grand old-times' in-
stitution, surviving recent differences, and transgressing the
lines of daily custom.
A STOIiY OF YESTERDAYS. 167
Plain old women in snuff-colored silks and white necker-
chiefs, with gold beads, like Mrs. Hathaway's, round their
throats, represented the rural dignities, and sat against the
walls, proper and very strange. Plainer women still, in
woollen stuffs, and indescribable combs and collars, gathered
modestly in far corners, and stretched and peered, with mild
fidgets and solicitudes, above the crowd ; doing their duty anx-
iously of seeing all that was to be seen. Young people took
the floor and danced together ; the simplest in some freshness of
white muslin and bright ribbons, or bran-new suits a little stiff
in the collars, and unaccustomed "pumps" and white stockings ;
they who came down out of a grander every-day, quiet and grace-
ful in their delicate best, as their mothers wore their satins and
velvets ; for unity, not contrast or pride ; the yeomanry and
shop-keepers would have been more wounded if the gentle-peo-
ple had slighted them with demi-toilette while they were doing
their utmost. It was a gay, good time ; everybody was happy ;
I wish they had such balls now.
I had not been the year before ; Uncle Royle had been ill.
Now he took us with him, he in all the precisenes"s and dignity
of his black clothes and ruffled shirt ; Aunt Ildy in black
silk and violet ribbons in her cap. He would have her go, not-
withstanding her orthodoxy ; and as she scrupulously kept out
of the card-room, and was under no temptation to dance, I sup-
pose she felt secure that the devil would get no more of her than
he was otherwise entitled to ; nevertheless, she did step round
very much as if the floor burned under her feet ; but perhaps
it was her tight black satin slippers. She had kept them for
state occasions ever since I could remember, and she allowed
herself great latitude and ease ordinarily, so that I think it
became more difficult each year to wear them complacently.
Is tins very ill-natured of me? I do not mean it so. I re-
spected Aunt Ildy ; I loved her, in spite of her hardness ; and
I never felt more gently affectionate than when she counte-
nanced me in this great pleasure that night.
But oh, I was happy ! Frivolously, excitedly, foolishly
happy ; it almost seemed to me wickedly, brought up as I had
been. Because I could not help being so glad that my blue
168 HITHERTO:
dress was just as pretty as it could be, and that the white
roses set so gracefully against my soft, full hair, and on the
bosom of the low corsage ; and that Uncle Royle had given me
money and bade me choose for myself, and I had been able to
have the little blue silk slippers which matched my dress.
This was of a kind of striped silk gauze ; the stripes were like
floating, glistening ribbons with their satiny texture and rip-
pling fall ; and I had long ribbons like them at my shoulders.
I had never been dressed like tins before. Now something
would happen ! Now the story would begin !
I think it did begin. The Copes were there ; afterward, Mrs.
Cope and her daughters went out to Europe to join Grandon,
and were gone four months ; but they were all there that night.
They spoke to everybody whom they met ; but they took me
right in among them, and kept me with them. We separated for
the dances ; Mrs. Cope would not allow her party to make up
sets by themselves ; they mixed simply and graciously among
the rest. And that set the tone for all New Oxford and South
Side ; there was no sidling off, nor any airs, or jealousy ;
everybody was happy, and went back into every-day the better
for it. I think it was as good as many a church service.
Everybody did not waltz then ; and the polka and its kin
were unknown. I waltzed ; I had learned at dancing-school
with Allard and his sisters, and he asked me every time for
his partner. I did not grow hot and tired, as some of the
heavy girls did ; I was small and slight ; and Allard held rne
up so lightly. He told me I waltzed as if I could not help it ;
and so I did.
I -was whole-half happy that night, if anybody would
know what that means. Yet I think we all do. I was utterly
happy with one side of me, the gay child-side. And I owed
it all to Allard Cope, nearly. With that gay, child-side of
me, I loved him ; then, and once in a while, always. Why
not quite and for all whiles ?
Hope Devine was there, too, with Richard Hathaway and
his mother, and I think there never was a better time than she
had that night.
When Hope was glad, her eyes, to which belonged a color
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 169
of their own at all times, had a strange clearness. They
seemed as if they were all light. You could see into them as
you can see into the sun, into an infinite, glowing ether.
So clear and lucent were they that they gave you that feeling
of depth, as the sun does, since through its ineffable clearness
you discern nothing but itself. It was like looking into a
soul.
I did not see very much of Richard that evening. I was with
the Copes so much, and he had his mother and Hope to care
for. I mean, I did not talk with him very much ; I saw him,
somehow, nearly all the time. I felt as if he saw me. I think
it was because he was always such a silent man that you felt
so the watching and the thinking of his friendship. I knew
he was glad that I was so happy. I liked to have him see me
dance, and I should have missed him out of the hall if he had
gone awajr, even in the very midst of a waltz.
Hope had never learned to dance. But that night she took
it, as she took everything else, by an inspiration. Not
the quadrilles ; people danced steps then, and she would not
try these, though I saw Richard asking her. I danced two
quadrilles with him myself; he came and asked me for them
very early.
There was something of his goodness in his very dancing.
He made no show or fuss about it ; he just moved with the
music in a simple, unpretending way, that was by no means
awkward either ; and he seemed to be always caring for his
partner. It was a kind of a similitude. He let you go from
him in the figures with a gentleness and a looking-after ; and
then he stood in his own place in a quietness that was like
trust, till you came to him again ; and then he claimed yon
and drew you back beside him in a way that was almost shel-
tering and tender ; and when he went too, through the gay and
intricate turns, it was like a joy and a protection. He was
no ballroom man ; he was a plain farmer, and danced perhaps
only twice or thrice in a year ; but there was the poetry
of it in the way he did it, as I never found it out from any-
body's else.
Hope got up at last, in the second country dance. She had
170 HITHERTO:
watched the first one down, as if she danced it in her heart,
and then she " saw how it went," as she sav; everything ; and
I only wish I could tell how she danced it. With Richard,
of course ; nobody else could have persuaded her. She was
just like a spirit. She didn't think of her feet or her hands ;
they took care of themselves ; it was Mke beautiful script,
her winding in and out, and up and clown ; tracing something
swiftly and surely to make an end and a meaning out of it.
There was not a halt, nor a break, nor a sharp, unskilful
turn ; every curve was a part and a hint of a perfect and
graceful whole. If her movement had marked itself somehow
as she went down the room, in the air, or along the floor, I
wonder what it would have been. Something akin to the
signs the swallows write against the dusk, or the flowers
make in smaller print, nodding and swaying on their stalks,
or the great inclusive hieroglyph the planets outline in
heaven.
But then she was always like that ; it was born in her ; it
was no wonder she could dance without learning. Lessons
only teach b} 7 rote a segment of the harmony that describes
itself continually in some few lives, and hers was one. If
she swept a floor, or made up a bed, it was just the same.
She stood with that happy look in her eyes, her hand still
in Richard's for an instant, at the foot, after they had fin-
ished. Something occurred to me at that moment. I won-
dered and I have wondered since if, or why But I
will remember only one thing at a time.
We ended with a " boulanger," a great dance in a circle,
all round the room, all of us together. I was between Allard
Cope and Richard in this. Allard was my partner, and
Richard was beyond me, with Hope again. This and the
country dance were the only two things she joined in.
There were basket figures, and grand right and left, and a
Spanish dance figure, and all rounds, and promenades, and a
" coquette." Hope fluttered a minute, when it came to her,
in this, and then turned suddenly and gave her hands again to
Richard. He took her hand quietly, and she looked so
content, that I wondered again why, and if. I came
A STOnY OF YESTERDAYS. 171
next, and I had half a mind to turn Richard too. At any
rate, I ran away from Allard Cope, and before I thought I
had got among some people I did not know, and then I broke
right through the set, and turned Allard's father, who stood
looking on. There was a great laugh, and he laughed pleas-
antly, too, and with his old-school courtesy led me down
the outside of the circle, and handed me back to his son. It
drew looks upon me; I had not meant it; it had just hap-
pened ; but there was, in the midst of the embarrassment, a
half-proud consciousness of the kind distinction with which
they treated me, and that people saw it ; and something that
1 did not stop to think about made my heart beat suddenly.
After that we broke up into a galoppe, up and down the
long room, and then came the thinning, and the stopping, and
the scattering away.
Somebody ran against Hope in the galoppe. She herself
was like a sunbeam, that glanced by or paused softly, always ;
she never would have run against anj T body ; but some one
blundered against her, and almost threw her down. Richard's
strong arm was round her waist instantly ; I saw him catch
her so, and hold her till he was sure she had her footing, and
was not hurt. Hope's face was bright all over with a sudden
blush. It was the mishap, the startle, perhaps ; but her eyes
were down, too. It was a different expression from any I
was used to in her. She was always so up-looking, so straight
and frank. If anything happened, she took it just as it was,
simply, and without disturbance. And this was only for an
instant, while she answered his question and moved gently
away out of his hold. I do not think she knew it herself, for
in an instant more it had quite passed, and her face had the
old, dear, happy look.
They did not dance any more. That was the last. And
Allard Cope took me up to the dressing-rooms then, to find
Aunt Ildy, and I put up her cap in the box, and found her
cloak and hood and moccasins for her, and put on 1113' own
wraps, and Uncle Royle came and looked in at the door, and
we joined him, and went downstairs.
Somebody at the foot held out an arm fur me as I camo
172 HITHERTO:
down behind them. I took it, without looking up. I thought
it was Allard Cope's. We went out from the passage that
seemed dim after the lights above, and stood on the snow-
path in the moonlight. Then I saw it was Richard Hath-
away.
" You have had a good time to-night." He did not ask,
he said it ; he had -seen my good time ; he had watched it.
" Oh, yes ! " I answered, with all my heart.
" I am glad."
I wonder why this did not seem much to me. I know now
how much it was ; how generous it was ; how those three words
held more of a man in them than the finest sentence could.
He did not say another syllable, except " good-night," after
he had seen me safe into the wagon sleigh. There was noth-
ing a bit romantic about Richard Hathaway. But his good-night
meant a real wish ; I felt that, then. Somehow, the grasp of
his hand stayed about mine long after we drove off and he
left us. He did not move until we had driven off. It had been
pleasure and excitement, upstairs, all the evening. Down here,
at this last moment, came a reminder of a rest ; of something
waiting for me to return to ; something sure, and for always.
I do not know what took Allard away, just as we left ; I
think he had meant to see me down ; but it had happened so.
Richard had not come in the way ; but he had watched there
at the stair-foot till I came down, alone ; and then he had been
ready.
He always did watch so ; and I always found him ready.
So- that it came to be a habit in my life, if I had a pain, or a
want, or a fear, that I thought of him ; he would have been so
sure to pity if he knew ; and to help, if he could.
If there is a heart in the world like this, with a friendship
in it for you, it is a divine thing, and life is rich. Yet you
may be restless ; and you may not know that it is enough.
That knowledge grows only out of the yesterdays.
It was after this t'hat Allard Cope came so much, all the
winter and spring, to our house. His eldest sister, Mrs. Oxeu-
aje, wijbh^her husband and two chiHren, came to South Side to
stay after the others went away. They went rather suddenly,
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 173
with a family of friends from New York, in one of the wonder-
ful new ocean steamers ; and they were to come home with
Grandon in the summer. Grandon had turned out such a noble
man. He had followed his scientific studies abroad, and had
become associated with some famous astronomers and mathe-
maticians, and his name was connected with new and im-
portant calculations. He was coining home full of great
plans and hopes for science in his own country.
Allard used to lend me books, and sometimes bring me
flowers. It was pleasant, and there was nothing for me to do,
at first, but to be pleased. It would have been absurd to be
in a hurry to put on airs of caution with Allard Cope, as if
his kindness meant anything new. I did not care to think
about it yet, if it did.
How could I tell anything yet?
Once in a while some sudden feeling would come over me,
of one or the other contradictory nature. A thrill, some-
times, with that great heart-beat, at a possibility that I
would not shape to myself; but that flashed a bright vision
upon me of what might come real to somebody. His home
and his mother and his brother, so high and distin-
guished and the whole family place and consequence. A
life of refinement, and access to noble and beautiful things
and companionships. I remembered those days shared with
me out of this life of theirs ; I remembered that night with the
stars.
I was pleased, in my lower self, to have Aunt Ilcly see what
she did see ; I was stung with a craving for her better thought
of me. It was partly a mere instinct for truth and justice ; I
knew there was more of me than she measui'ed. What if I
got so far, sometimes ; but I never said the rest. Yet the
question asked itself of me in the under-conscionsness, and it
went to make up the force that swayed me this way.
And then, again, it would be the shrinking the unreadi-
ness ; at some special word or look it would come, and put a
trouble in my heart. Was I right? What ought I to do?
How could I tell ?
This is the trouble with a woman ; there is no interval ; from
174 HITHERTO:
the minute it begins she must act as from a certainty ; people
will judge her, looking back from the end ; and for her it is an
impropriety to be looking forward. She must " know what
she is about," while she is making up her mind. She must
see and not see, feel and not feel ; her conscience interferes
before her heart can interpret itself.
It was pleasant to be with Allard Cope ; I was proud of his
caring for me ; I should have missed it if he had not. I was
uneasy if he kept away longer than usual ; and yet, half the
time, I was afraid of his coming aud of what it meant.
In the midst of this I went out again to stay with the
Hathaways.
And then Allard began to come over there.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 175
CHAPTER XIV.
RED HILL.
IT was pleasant June weather, the last of the month,
when I went to the farm ; just the season for drives and coun-
try plans.
The first time Allard came, he met us at Red Hill, on our
way home from a strawberrying, the second day of my visit. And
then nothing would do but he must get his sisters out there,
they had just come home, all of them together, from Europe,
and they must pick strawberries, and drink Mrs. Cryke's
beer.
This was the beginning of a good deal of intercourse, to
and fro, between South Side and the Farm.
"What could I do to help that ? People took summer drives
from far and wide, to taste Mrs. Cryke's beer, and go round
Red Hill in the sunset. Why should not the Copes come ? It
was their all coming, and our getting all together so, that
made it impossible for me to prevent Allard. And he was
over now, nearly every day, on one errand or another.
One night we had a regular party to the top of the hill.
We had never been yet, in all this time, to get the jasper Rich-
ard had promised me years before. There had always been
something else doing, when I was at the Farm, and going up
Red Hill seemed to be the thing for a party. So at last it
happened that though I had lived all my life within half-a-
dozen miles of it, I climbed it for the first time now, with
Hope and Richard, and the Copes and Augusta Hare, who had
come to South Side again to make a visit. She had been
abroad, too, with a party of friends, only last year. She
travelled about a great deal. She spent most of her summers
at some gathering place at springs or seashore, the inoun-
176 HITHERTO:
tains were not invented then, or in visiting about ; and her
winters sometimes at Washington, sometimes in New York,
and sometimes in H . Her old engagement had come to
nothing. It lasted just long enough to give her # great
school-girl eclat and pre-eminence, and then something hap-
pened which made another interesting story and excitement
for the young world that had time to tell and hear it over into
a tradition that it knew by heart ; something in which she
played a very spirited and dramatic part, distinguishing her-
self as much in the dismissal of her lover as in the having
one at all. But the really best of it was that it occurred in
such early youth that she had had time to outgrow it in the
memories of thoughtful and sensible people who had not
learned it by heart at the time, and to whom it might not have
appeared such an advantage.
So now she was at the Copes again.
Grandon Cope drove over with Augusta and Laura and a
friend Miss Rathbun to whom they wished to show Red
Hill. Kitty and Allard rode.
Hope and Richard and I just went over in the open wagon,
as usual. Hope had tea, and all sorts of nice things in bas-
kets, behind, ready for our gypsy supper. Of course we could
not have done without Hope, any more than we could without
the baskets.
Hope had a position at the Farm and in Broadfields such as
is peculiar, I suppose, to a New England family and neighbor-
hood. The Hathaways took her in, from the outset, as one
of themselves ; she grew up so, and nobody troubled them-
selves to go back of that, or to inquire how she had begun.
The fact was accomplished. And besides, if they had
troubled, she began, after all, just as they did, only up in New
Hampshire. She came of farming people, too. She was just
a bright, clever New England girl, and her place was anywhere
where Providence might please to put her ; and Providence,
without the least irreverence, pleases to put New England men
and women in a good many different places, sometimes, before
it has done with them. We are not planted, like our oaks and
pines, or even according to the catechism.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 177
It was an instance of how we do shade and blend together
here, and how one tone of uniting color runs through the
varying tints, that circumstances could bring it about that the
Copes and Hope Devine should meet here on Red Hill, taking
tea together quite on equal terms for the time being. She was
one with the Hathawa}^ ; the Hathaways were important and
respected people in this country neighborhood, and they were
my friends and entertainers ; and I was admitted, from just an
etage below, perhaps, but out of good family claim, and what
they pleased to consider personal qualifications, to their inti-
macy and friendship. There is more fine line-drawing in
cities, among people who truly, after all, are far more on a
level ; but the real country still holds, or did th.cn, its good,
old, healthy backbone which is its strength ; and no one verte-
bra unlocks itself foolishly from its neighbor, up and down.
I think I never saw so handsome a man as Grandon Cope.
He was beginning, even at twenty-eight, to grow a little stout ;
but he was built upon a plan that would bear this amplifying.
A little, small-featured man, who grows squat, and Avhose eyes
shut up as his flesh increases, may well deprecate the gain.
It turns him into just what he is, at some root of his nature.
But a man who grows grand and full, who seems as if his
heai't were big enough to require more body to hold it than
other people's, and whose intellect sits supreme on an am-
ple brow and kindles within large-orbited, deep-set eyes,
whose limbs are firm and free, to stride forth into his life-
action, to stretch out a broad-handed grasp, and to gather into
strong, sheltering embrace that which he would hold next the
great, generous heart, this man is one of God's glorious
creatures, and such a man was Grandon Cope. There were a
few shining threads among the close, brown locks upon his
temples, thus early. They only glistened at the ends, like a
slight powdering of silver grains, and they helped, artistically,
as a point of color, to fill out the lustre of the face whose
deeply brilliant eyes and perfect teeth made its smile, or its
least movement in speech, a resplendence.
I had as much idea of Gramlou Cope taking any special no-
tice of rne as I had of Red Hill bowing its crest before my as-
12
178 f HITHERTO:
cending feet. I talked and walked with Allard and Hope.
Richard helped the young ladies up the rough ascent, and
they seemed well pleased with his quiet, manly efficiency and
his becoming bearing. They made him talk, as much as he
ever did ; and to make Richard Hathaway talk was to draw
forth something real and significant, in so far as it went. Mr.
Grandon Cope had Miss Rathbun and Augusta to his share',
naturally, as the elders of the party. Walking behind these, I
looked and listened.
We kept this order nearly all the way up the hill. Richard
carried a large basket ; Hope had a small, light one, which
having cream and vanity cakes in it, she would by no means
trust to other hands. Mr. Cope and Allard were each laden,
also, with some contribution from South Side. I had the bas-
ket of sponge cake. One of the farm boys who had ridden over
on Swallow, trudged in the rear, with frequent halts, bearing
the few articles of table furniture that were needed, with the
spirit-lamp and the water-boiler, and some spoons.
" If the fun of the world isn't the work, after all, why pic-
nics?" said Grandon Cope, looking back and laughing.
" Only, perhaps," said I, as I met his look, " we're so used
to our pack that we don't know how to go without it."
It took very little to amuse Grandon Cope. I have noticed
this in other men of great thought and deep study. The
laugh was alwaj^s perdu in his eyes and on his lips. I believe
it is the greatest fools who go gravest through the world. If
the heart and brain hold anything much, it overflows easily.
He laughed again at my answer, and then the quietness came
back, as he said, still in the same tone, however :
" I wonder if we shall feel so. about our troubles, some-
time?"
It set me thinking. If all my troubles rolled away from me
suddenly, what should I be, the rest of me? Very like,
perhaps, to something from which the law of gravitation had
withdrawn itself, it occurred to me, all at once, to imagine.
I did not know that Mr. Cope observed ine further, or saw
that I was still thinking. It startled me when I heard him
say, unexpectedly, " Well?" And I looked up to see that he
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 179
was speaking to me. At the same time, Hope had fallen back
a little, and he dropped into her place by my side. Allard
had to go on then, with the others. The Copes were always
polite.
I knew what he meant. I like monosyllables. I like brief,
snatchy talk. I can't bear a person who begins like a law} T er's
deed, upon every topic, with a " Know all men by these pres-
ents," and goes on with whereases and aforesaids.
It was like a little whet to a knife, that " Well ? " it
sharpened and brightened me up.
" Half-a-dozen things," I said, answering what I knew he
meant to ask. " The old woman that had her skirts cut off,
the draggle and rags, I suppose, and wondered ' if it be I.'
Pains and pearls, bad for the oyster, and yet the best
of him; and an apple that I've, sometimes tried to get all the
knurls out of before I ate it, and then found there wasn't any-
thing left but a few sposhy crumbs."
" Have you found all that out?"
"No. It's only a translation, yet. I can read it, that's
all. I suppose I shall go on digging out the knurls and spoil-
ing the apple."
Why is it that a certain part of ourselves comes readily and
inevitably forth of us in speech to certain persons ? I should
never have spoken so to Allard, or even to Richard Hathaway.
Perhaps to Hope Devine I might say some such things ; but
just imagine me talking like that to Miss Chism ! And hei'e
was a man, a stranger, far above me every way, of whom I
was afraid when I stopped to think about it, and something in
him laid hold of my secret, inmost feeling and drew it to the
light. Out there, it began to look impertinent. I colored and
stopped.
"It's a good thing to adopt a trouble," said Grandon
Cope.
" Borrow ! "
" No. Grow round it, as the roots grow round the stones.
Or as the prettiest things in pleasure-grounds come of the
disfigurements that could not be got rid of , old stumps made
180 HITHERTO :
into pedestals for flowers' and vines, and rocks heaped all
over with lovely plants that flourish nowhere else."
" That's more translating. And the same is in homelier
things. I think I do like a dress better after I have turned
and darned it, or spilled something on it and got the spot out."
" Ladies used to wear patches for beauty-spots."
"But then the patches weren't blisters!" Along
breath came in between the two parts of my sentence.
Mr. Cope looked at me earnestly. He laughed, at the same
time ; but the look came through the laugh, from very kind
and understanding eyes. It was as if he saw, over my
shoulder, all at once, what book it was out of which I was
translating. I wonder it did not seem more strange to him.
He could not have had a copy of his own, anywhere, that he
had ever learned a lesson from. I thought so then ; later, I
have almost come to the belief that it is the primer, and that
the whole school learns it.
" To go back to the beginning of our interpretations," he
said. "Did you know it is sometimes easier to carry both
hands full than one ? "
" Two pails of water, with a hoop round them, yes ; but
then I couldn't carry one pail far."
"Only a little basket, with some cake in it? Well, we
shall be glad of the cake, when we get to the top. What do
you think is in my basket ? "
" Something a great deal better than mine. I am sure of
that."
" It is heavier. See ! "
. " Yes. But you are bigger and stronger."
" Shall I show you? " He finished the sentence so, after
a break. I think he was going to say something different at
first, but remembered that we were talking in metaphors. I
think he was going to ask if he should help me carry mine ;
and he was not a man to make a foolishness like that. His
very fancies were true, and fitted themselves to no absurdi-
ties. I did not think of all this then, though.
He lifted the lid a little, and showed me, lying in layers
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 181
among soft, snow-white cotton, great rosy peaches from his
father's hot-houses.
" "We don't know each other's burdens, the weight or the
beauty of them ; and we don't often know what is inside our
own. We shall find that out when we get to the top."
" What a jumble we have been talking ! " he began again,
after a minute in which I had found nothing more to say.
"And yet it has been all one thing," I answered. " I am
very much obliged to you, Mr. Cope."
" For letting you see the peaches ? "
" Yes."
" We are almost up, now. Feel the breeze. That's the air
that never quite gets down into the valleys, but only sweeps
over the crests."
Mr. Cope took off his straw hat, and stood still a moment.
We had come out into the " thinning ; " where there were
open spaces of crisp turf, and rocky knolls bare to the winds
and the sunlight. The pine-trees stood here and there in
groups. We had spread ourselves as we ascended into this
out of the closer path. Mr. Cope and I had got away to the
right of the others, and had had our talk mostly to our-
selves.
" O Mr. Cope ! Here is the jasper ! "
I picked up a piece at my feet. A great rock cropped out
of the sod, with the rich, dull red upon it that could be fretted
to such a lustre.
The old thought came back to me again.
" Perhaps you can tell me, now," I said.
"Perhaps. What?"
" About the meanings. Jasper, and sapphire, and chalce-
dony ; emerald, sardonyx, sardius, and chrysolite ; beryl,
topaz, chrysoprase, jacinth, and amethyst. I want to know
them all, the twelve stones : the wall of the New Jerusa-
lem."
He stood with his bared head lifted up in the fresh breeze,
against the clear sky. Something noble came into his face,
listening to what I said. It was the answer, dawning.
" We want to know them all, yes ; if we can be worthy.
182 HITHERTO:
But it is hard reading, some of it. We should skip some of
the lines if we had our way. We should build a low, poor
wall, of but one stone perhaps. See ! This crimson that lies
at the beginning, it is the color of passion, suffering. Out
of the crimson we climb into the blue, that is truth and
calm. Beyond, is the white, glistening chalcedony, for purity ;
and next, flashes out the green, the hope of glory. Then
the} 7 mingle and alternate, the tenderness, and the pain, and
the purifying ; it is the veined sardonyx stands for that, the
life-story.
"The blood-red sard is the sixth stone, the whole trium-
phant love that contains and overwhelms all passion ; the
blessedness intense with its included anguish. It is the
middle band ; the supreme and central type ; crowning the
human, underlying the heavenly. Then the tints grow clear
and spiritual ; chrysolite, golden-green, touched with a glory
manifest ; the blending of a rarer and serener blue, the won-
derful, sea-pure beryl. Then, the sun-filled rapture of the
topaz ; and chrysoprase, where flame and azure find each
other, the joy of the Lord, and the peace that passeth
understanding. In the end, the jacinth purple and pure
amethyst, into which the rainbow refines itself at last, hint-
ing at the far distance of ineffable things. For it is the story
of the rainbow, too."
" I knew it was ! "
" It was a sublime sentence that was written on the cloud to
stand forever. Colors have always been types. How strange
it is, that living amidst signs and emblems, living by them
as we do, since the lifting of an eyelid, the quiver of a muscle,
the sweep of an arm, the gesture of a finger, speak more
meanings from the commonest man to man, than books-full
of words, we should trouble and dispute about speeches
and writings, as if nothing had been given to the world except
by these. We look a man in the face to understand him.
Why not look in God's face ? "
That was grand. Because it was spoken so simply, look-
ing right in my face, as he had said all the rest ; not with the
changed tone of a half-ashamed solemnity, such as the name
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 183
of God comes in with, if it come at all, to most men's talk.
The beauty of his thought led directly up to this. Of the
truth and the power of it nothing else could come, and noth-
ing less.
" ' Like a jasper and a sardine stone.' Do you remember
where that comes in again?"
I knew the Revelation almost by heart.
" Oh, yes," I answered. " ' He that sat upon the throne
was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone, and there
was a rainbow round about the throne in sight like unto an
emerald.' It is the same thing, right over."
" Yes, and the meaning proved. Out of two or three wit-
nesses every word shall be established. How full the words
are of the depth and glow that require such a rich similitude !
The wall of stones was like an alphabet ; it gave you the key
to the whole radiant language. Without such key to its
types, no wonder people puzzle over the Apocalypse. It is a
strange denoting of the aspect of the Son of man, taken at the
mere letter ; ' like unto a jasper and a sardine stone,; ' but read
them as the fervent attesting colors of Suffering and Love,
and how full the Face and Presence are, so briefly likened !
Did you ever think how much color says to us? How it puts
in mind of things ?ispeakable ? The depth of the sky,
how should we know it without the blue ? The rest and the
shadow of the earth and the great trees, what would they
be without the green ? So that a mere ribbon comes to give
a feeling ; of freshness, or brightness, or coolness, or warmth,
or softness. To me, words have colors. Standing for things
and for meanings, they take the shades of them. People's
names have tints, by which I like or dislike them."
" That seems strange," I said. " To me, words and names
have shapes and attitudes, rather. Think of ' reach,' for in-
stance. You can feel the stretch of it. And ' grasp,' and
' leap,' and ' crouch,' and ' grovel,' and ' lift.' You can see
the posture of them all."
" Those are words of attitudes. But you are right, as well
as I. ' Tender,' and ' true,' ' strong,' ' brave,' ' great,' * tiny ; '
you can see the delicate touch, the unswerving line, the swell
184 HITHERTO:
and tension of the muscle, the bare, free, unflinching brow,
the expansiveness and the holding, the mite that you look
closely or downward to perceive. I can read them so, but
they come to me most easily in shades. It is just what
I said before. Words are only the arbitrary signs. We talk
and think in living types. If language does not suggest
these, it has no meaning. ' In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' How
can people look and not read? And in the crowding and
fulness of it all, ask for ' a sign' ? "
This was so real, so different from the usual set-apart
tone of anything that approaches topics of faith, that it
filled me full of a new and wonderful warmth and glow of
perception and gladness. I wondered, too, at Grandon
Cope ; for I had heard, even then, other things of men of
learning, and of the Anti-Christ of Science.
I spoke something of this to him.
" I thought," I said, " that scientific men came, often, to
doubt could not reconcile these things ? "
" How do you look at a picture? "
I did not quite consciously comprehend ; but I had an
intuition, by which I answered to his meaning.
" Into it," I said.
" Exactly. Some people measure the lines, and fit a theo-
rem to the proportions, and analyze the pigments and the
mixtures. That is one finding out, the mechanical how
of it, perhaps ; the thing itself is taken differently."
We came, now, upon the great, round top of Red Hill.
The sun, far down the west, sent horizontal shafts of light
upon us, and below, the woods and fields lay in cool masses of
shadow. The quick breeze found us out here, too, search-
ingly ; and we were glad of the shawls we had brought with
us. The dr}', warm, lichen-cushioned rocks gave us pleasant
seats, and the turf itself was our table. We had hot tea in
ten minutes, out of the spirit-boiler. We drank this, and ate
fruit and cake, and hardly knew which we tasted, or where
the cheer and strength came in from, these, or that which
we took in at our eyes ; all the hill-sides, and meadows, and
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 185
grain-fields, and river-bends, and gleams of ponds, and
glooms of woods, and grouped villages, and scattered farm
buildings ; the wide, round, perfect sphere of the blue sky,
with its clouds turning golden and bronze in the light and
"shadow of the coming sunset, and soon to be gorgeous with
crimsons and purples and saffrons, and intenser flecks of glory
that would not be color, but pure flame ; the greens that turned
black, and indigo, and blue, and faintest violet, with the lines
of farther distances, hill lapping over hill, and forest stretch-
ing behind forest, till there was the word of the rainbow
again, with its near and far, its first and last.
"Are you comfortable, Anstiss?" Richard came and
asked of me. He had been fetching water from the little
spring on the other side the brow ; opening baskets, help-
ing Hope, spreading shawls ; making everybody comfortable.
Now he came and sat down beside me.
"Isn't it beautiful?"
All my thought of the last half hour was in my question,
to my own feeling ; but how should it have been to his ?
What was there in my commonplace word, to convey it?
Why should I have been disturbed and disappointed when he
only said, in answer :
" Yes ; there's no better outlook in forty miles. It's a
pleasant country ; and a pretty pleasant world, it seems to me
sometimes, Anstiss."
How did I know how much might be behind that? What
right had I to judge his thought as less than mine ? He had
got his pleasant, peaceful word out of it all, as straight from
God as any. In his eyes there was a rest and a gentleness
that were reflections of that which spoke about us, in the air,
the light, the color, and the stillness. There was something
large and strong, too ; the expanding of some soul-horizon ;
the waiting for some hour of night and loss that might come
between him and the day. I look back, and see it, now.
" Diversities of gifts ; but the same Spirit ; " why could I not
read it then ?
" I have found out about the jasper, Richard."
186 HITHERTO :
I would have brought him my new treasure of meaning
and feeling, as a child brings home a gift to show.
I had asked him the question years before ; of course he
had forgotten it.
"Jasper? oh, yes; there's plenty of it, the common red*
kind. But sometimes you can find a piece of ribbon jasper,
with the white streaks in it. Have you seen that ? "
" Oh, there it is again ; that's the meaning of it, Richard.
That's the chalcedony ; that comes afterward ; that is rare
with the red. Oh. how beautiful it all is ! "
He looked at me with only a sy mpathy for the fact of my
pleasure.
I was restless that he should know. I forgot how it had
come, by no forcing, but a gentle, natural following, and a
gradual help and answering, to me. I forgot that I had not
begun, that I could not begin, with another, perhaps, at the
very beginning which had told itself to me. I forgot that he
was reading, all the while, another leaf, it might be, of the
self-same book.
"I mean about the wall in Revelation. The types of the
stones, and the way things come after each other. Suffering
and love, and truth, and purity ; the red jasper, and the blue
sapphire, and the white chalcedony ; then the brightness of
the emerald, and the mixed sardonyx, and the deep-red sard ;
and purer green, and clearer blue, gladness, and fulfilment,
and rest ; and topaz, and chrysoprase, the joy unspeakable
and the perfect peace ; and jacinth, and ametlryst, the colors
of the heavenly beyond, like those far-off hills."
He did not know the wall by heart, as I did, stone by stone,
and the colors of them ; the unity and the coherence of the
interpretation could not appear to him as it did to me, in the
moment of my rapid utterance of what had become so famil-
iar. He sat and looked quietly at the far purple hills, and let
me be, as it were, with my fancies and my enthusiasm.
- " Don't you see, Richard ? " I asked, impatiently.
" I don't know. There seems to be a good deal of it," he
said, in his pleasant, half-jocose fashion. " I suppose you
might make out almost anything, that way."
A S TO JIT OF YESTERDAYS. 187
" You couldn't make things that would hold together, unless
they were true. Any more than you could tell that two and
two made four, if once in a while they happened to make five.
Or if apples did, and peaches didn't."
" Figures always turn out according to rule. They can't
make mistakes."
" They're only the signs of things that fit together. And
when you've got the things, you don't stop for the figures.
You can see that two apples are just as many again as one
without doing the sum. It's the seeing that's the beginning
of it, and of everything. When a good many people have
seen the same thing it becomes a piece of knowledge, to be
handed about. When a good many people have had the same
thought, or the same feeling, and they come of the same
causes, or hang together and explain each other, then they
make words for them, and the words hang together ; and
there's something reasonable and established ; something that
nobody stops to dispute about. But you've got to believe
your own or somebody else's eyes to begin with ; inside or
outside eyes, whichever it may be. How do you know what
blue is, at all?"
" I don't, " said Richard, simply.
"But it gives you a kind of a feeling. It's one thing, and
red's another. One seems soft, and the other bright. And
soft and bright are feelings, too, that everybody's had till
they've grown into " words. Richard, everything is a word.
And the meaning is the whole of it. All creation is one great
talk, I think."
Richard Hathaway laughed out. It jarred with me ; I meant
something grand and solemn. I did not want to assume
grandeur and solemnity ; I hated to seem to try to be eloquent.
I put it into common words ; but I meant what I think the
fir; t chapter of John's Gospel means. And Richard thought
it was only funny.
I got up and left him sitting there, and went over and joined
Hope, to help her put up the cups and plates.
Twenty minutes after, whe*n the last mellowness of the sun-
set was gliding away through the heavens and over the hill-
188 HITHERTO:
sides, and we began to speak of going home, I saw him sitting
there still, by himself, with his head against the palm of his
h.and.
I wondered if I had hurt him. I could not bear to do that,
he was so kind and true. I went over to him again, and
spoke.
" Come, Richard ; we're going. What are you making out
now? It's your turn, you see."
He took me by surprise, looking up at me in the way he
did. His face was full ; if his lips had spoken it all, I felt as
if I might have trembled before it. But all he said was :
" You mustn't think, Anstiss, that I don't like your thoughts.
Or to have you tell them to me. I was only pleased at your
little ways of saying things."
It was not much ; but it was so sorry and patient. As if
he had been wholly wrong, and I had not been rude and un-
friendly. As if his laugh had been anything but the honest
happiness he always felt with me and in my ways from the
time I was a little child until now. He spoke the word
" pleased " as the New England country-folk do speak it,
meaning amused, touched gently with a sense' of droll apt-
ness. It is another remnant of the old decorums that kept
all things chastely under. I have heard a plain, quiet woman,
subdued by long Puritanic proprieties, say of an occurrence
utterly and convulsively funny, "I was so pleased. I had
to smile."
There is something quaint and gentle in the word so used ;
it just expressed Richard's meaning ; he was kindly, even ten-
derly amused ; at my way, not at the thought I had and tried
to speak. But when I had wanted him to seize the thought
and help me on with it, ah, there we were back again, at the
very thing that had offended me.
" I didn't mind the laughing, Richard, if you had only
cared ! "
" Perhaps I do care ; but I can't tell much of my carings,
Anstiss."
Something made his lips shut tightly after he said this, as if
otherwise they might have quivered.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 189
How different he was from Grandon Cope ; how little he
satisfied me in one part of my .nature ; how thoroughly he
calmed and rested me in another !
" Never mind, Richie," I said. " We won't talk ; we'll just
have a good time."
But for all that, when we got into twos and threes again,
going down the hill, Allard was with me. I think Mr. Gran-
don Cope made a step or two toward me once, as if he had
something to say, and would have joined me ; but it seemed
as if he knew it would interrupt Allard, for he glanced at him
and turned away. There was a kind, brotherly look in his
eyes as he did so.
I was reading very fast, then. A great deal came to me
that I did not spell out as it came, but took rather as we take
in the sense of whole printed pages sometimes, hardly con-
scious of the word-points that we catch, but only of a general
complexion. Everything was making me more and more at
home with the Copes, as a family ; making me more and more
to feel how cordially they all received and liked me, and how
little I could spare that intercourse and liking out of my
life.
" Grandon is delighted with you, Anstiss," said Allard, as
we walked forward together. And then he went on to tell me
what a splendid fellow Grandon was, and what a difference his
coming back had made at home. " We are a whole family,
now, I can assure you. We never seem to be quite that when
Gran' is away. Everybody goes to him with their questions
and their plans. He puts us all at our best, too, you see. He
brings out the colors, like a strong light. Yes," he repeated,
pleased with the simile he had hit upon, " that is precisely
it. Everything comes out ; and everything shows up for what
it is, when he is present. He looks at a thing, and you see it,
before he speaks, just as he sees it, if you hadn't noticed it
was there before. I am so glad he likes you ; but I knew he
would."
Allard was just as frank as a boy ; he spoke his thought
without measuring beforehand what it might reveal. There
was a great deal evident in tlieue words of his. I came close
190 HITHERTO:
enough, then, to be counted among the things of home to be
judged of in this strong light of Grandon's presence, and it
was a great deal to Allard how I might be judged ; as if he,
in some way, were responsible for me. It almost seemed as if
some significant matter were already sanctioned and settled.
Certainly it appeared that this was all that Grandon Cope
could possibly have to do with it or me. As Allard's friend
as the friend and intimate of all he approved, and found
reason in me ; and for this Allard was glad.
I was glad also, and proud ; at that moment, to be among
them so, and to look up with them, claiming in part, as they
did, his help and companionship, was a great and a sufficient
thing. I never felt more drawn toward Allard, more moved
to stretch forth my hands to him and have them filled, to re-
joice in the good of his life and take it into mine, than now.
I thought of the home, of Laura and Kitty, of brotherhood
and sisterhood like theirs. They had among them all I
craved ; I was almost ready to seize it as it came to me ; I
could never dream of coming closer to it than this. The
heart that has gone hungering and thirsting for many things
can hardly compare possible satisfyings when first it catches a
near flavor of great joy.
I was very glad that Grandon Cope was pleased with me.
Everything seemed bright and happy. I was willing that Al-
lard should quite keep me to himself, and talk on, gayly and
affectionately. Life looked pleasant before me that evening ;
I hardly feared the turnings of the way. It would all come
out right ; there would be guide-boards to follow.
The great midsummer moon poured her light down through
the Red Hill woods ; it sifted and shimmered through the pine
branches, and baptized the old gray rocks with beauty. Our
way was at once fair and dim ; we walked in a seclusion and
a glory. We heard the sweet night-sounds of the forest ; the
winds and the wakeful insects, and the trickle of tireless
water ; the stir and spring of growing interlacing things. I
was held and touched with the exquisite pervading charm ;
Allard Cope was at my side, and Grandou walked behind,
looking down upon us two together, kindly and well-pleased.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 191
In all this I hardly knew where my happiness most lay ; but I
was happy. I began to think that I could always be con-
tent.
THE SILENT SIDE.
She talked of Suffering and of Love, of the stones in the
wall of the New Jerusalem ; she could not see the colors a
human soul was taking at her very side. How the Crimson
touched it even then ; how it was entering, perhaps, the bap-
tism of its agony.
They preach of a great Vicarious Anguish, suffered for the
world. Do they not know, rather, that it was suffered in and
with it ; that it was, instead, an Infinite Participance and Sym-
pathy ; that the anguish was in the world, and the Love came
down, and tasted, and identified itself with it, making of the
ultimate of pain a sublime, mysterious Rapture? That it is
far more to feel the upholding touch of One who goes down
into the deep waters before us, and to receive, so, some little
drops that we can bear of the great Chrism, than to stand
apart, safe on the sunny bank, while He passeth the flood for
us, bridging it safely for our uncleansed feet forever ? That
not this was the Pity and the Sacrifice ; that is the Help
and the Salvation ; the Love and the Pain enfold us together ;
that is what the jasper and the crimson mean ; the first refrac-
tion where the Divine Light falls into our denser medium of
being ; the foundation-stone of the heavenly building. The
beginning of the At-one-ment ; till, through the thinning angles
and the tenderer, peacefuller tints, our life passes the whole
prism of its mysterious experience, and beyond the far-off
violet, at last, it rarefies to receive and to transmit the full
white light of God.
What did she know of this, but some faint perception of the
beauty? She talked of things in which he had not learned;
she handled signs that were strange to him ; all the while, he
was beginning upon the things themselves they stood for.
" A talk, all of it, is it? " Richard Ilatluivvay said to him-
192
HITHERTO:
self, sitting there with his head upon his hand, and the sun
going down before him ; and all the air turning red. " I think
it is more a doing and a bearing. What is it the Bible
tells about ' patterns of things ' ? They are patterns of things,
maybe, and meanings, as she says ; but a pattern fs a thing
to do by. It isn't just a picture to look at. Ever}' man has got
his own wall to build. After some pattern that we don't know,
as likely as not. We're working most according to some rule
that's above our work, perhaps, when we think most we're
having our own way, or taking our chance.. I don't expect
to understand the whole project of it ; I can't make out an
architect's plan and specifications, and I don't know as I'm
meant to. I'm only a journeyman builder, and the stock's
furnished. I must take it up as it comes. I know very well
what stone's laid upon me now to carry."
Beyond that, the unspoken wording ceased ; there was no
shape of thinking for what came next. The weight was upon
him, that was all ; and there was the soul-strain as of one
who taketh up his cross. Yet the burden was transfused all
through with the flush of his great courage. That turns the
dead rock into the living preciousness, fit for its setting in the
high and everlasting places.
His thought had been as true and grand as hers. What if
he had only uttered it as it came, if indeed it came in time ?
Grand thoughts do not always arrive -for the parade and the
review ; it is for the fight that they reserve themselves in na-
tures like his. You see he was not busy with his thinking, but
his living.
How he should bear and wait. How he should let her
prove, and try, and receive, and choose. How he should
stand always ready and never in the way.
If all this fell short, after all, of filling, and satisfying, and
shaping her life ; if there remained to her, by and by, only a
friendship, tantalizing, perhaps, in the different sphere it
reached from to her, and contrasted with her own ; if the rest,
and the home, and the certainty were wanting still, then,
perhaps, her womanhood might turn to him and to his fireside
as her childhood had done. Then, perhaps, heart and hearth,
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 193
waiting so long with a great faithfulness, might take her
blessedly to their glow and peace.
Out in the west the crimson was softening. The beautiful
liquid gold was beginning to overflow in the far deeps, and to
touch the little flecks of clouds till they burned like stars.
Something transfigured itself like that in Richard Hatha-
way's thought. A far-off rapture lit and shone along the
horizon.
" God help me ! " The cry stirred in his soul that did not
pass his lips. The cry of a great hope and a tender longing ;
his pain had been silent.
Then had come the hand upon his shoulder, and the voice
in his ear :
" Come, Richard ! "
And then he had looked up with his face that was full.
How could she guess at what the man was, from the few,
plain, kindly words he uttered? How could she translate that
fulness and that shining, or make them seem in keeping with
his homely phrase ? How could the gentle, constrained excuse
convey the regret, generous and tender even to a remorse, that
moved him, thinking how he had disappointed her and sent
her away ? Or the love, held back and panting, that if it had
spoken itself out might, as she divined, have made her
tremble?
How should she know what pain came back to him when
she said :
" Never mind, Richie ; we won't talk, we'll just have a
good time."
That was all he was good for ! She would keep her
thoughts for people who could answer them. When she was
in a childish mood she would come to him to have a good
time ! That was what her word sounded like to him.
The glitter had gone from the cloud-specks. They were turn-
ing cold and gray. The gold had poured itself all out and had
been wasted. The moon was burnishing her disk brighter and
brighter overhead, as the sun-rays died. They would have
her light to go home with, and their day would be done.
Hope came to Richard ; she had nobody else to walk with,
13
194 HITHEETO:
after Allard Cope and Anstiss moved away. And so the
party broke itself into its twos and threes, and the moonlit
woods said this to one and that to another as they went
down.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 195
CHAPTER XV.
OUTSIDE.
I SAT in the east doorway, looking out into the front yard.
The north-west wind, coming down from the mountains, cool
over the house-top, met the morning sunshine slanting down
through green boughs, and made it pleasant. The grass was
all over leaf-shadows and flecks of bright, shifting light.
A quick little flash of life the tiniest of striped squirrels
played in and out the old stone wall between the door-yard
and the Long Orchard. The cat was chasing the shadows ;
springing after them as they shifted, crouching herself in the
cool grass, leaping now and then up a tree-trunk. I sat
watching them.
Just made and meant for them all of it ? Doubtless it
seemed to them so. Men build stone walls, and squirrels
come and live in them. What do they care for other uses ?
From the squirrel-point there are none.
The great trees have grown these fifty years, or a hundred ;
and the sun shines down through the far heaven, and there
are beautiful little flickering lights and shades in every little
forest and garden corner. The cat thinks it was all got up
for her. It falls in with her life and suits it. Her nature
answers to it. So it was got up for her, or she for it, which
is the same thing. Every life is a centre, and all things are
made for it, just as if there were no other. .The leaf plays
for the cat, and the cat for me.
These thoughts came dreamily through my mind, and I half
received their significance.
" How the little chinks are filled up ! " I said to Hope, who
came out behind me. " And how much room there is for
everything ; and everything has all the room ! "
196 HITHERTO:
Hope waited, as she always did when I began at the end
and talked backward.
" That cat has got the whole world to herself this morning.
And there's an inch-or-two-long brown squirrel, that can as
much as ever handle a cherry-stone, and a wall of great rocks
was built half a lifetime ago for him to come and live in.
Miles of wall, all over the towu, if he likes, full of safe lit-
tle hiding-holes at every step, for his travels. Everything
suits so much more than it was made for. Everything thinks
it is the main thing."
" Everything is the main thing, and everj^thing else goes
round and round it. Every little world takes the whole sky
to hold it, after all. Nothing is outside," said Hope.
People don't say " after all," unless they have had a ques-
tion or an experience. What had Hope been on the outside
of?
" That reminds me," she said again. " I must go over
this afternoon to the Polisher girlses."
That was the way they spoke in Broadfields, of four old-
maiden sisters who lived on the outside of everything. The
"Polisher girls" they had been called for fifty years; and
"the Polisher girlses" was the rustic possessive when people
spoke of their home and belongings. Everybody -had come to
use it, they who knew better and they who did not.
On the outside of the town, on the outside of their gen-
eration, on the outside verge of life; outside of love and
beauty and the interest and fashion of passing and growing
things ; outside of expectation for anything new, or more, in
this world ; and yet Hope thought of them when she said that
everybody was in the middle.
Lodemia, or Lodemy, as the Yankee termination made it,
braided woollon mats, wove rag-carpets, and quilted quilts.
Mrs. Hathaway had a great coverlet of patchwork ready.
She and Martha alwaj^s kept a basket full of scraps, and cut
them up into geometrical shapes, and illustrated science with
them in the piecing together, in the long summer afternoons
and winter evenings.
I said I would go to the Polisher girlses, too.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. . 197
Something that happened made me remember the day and
them, as they were that day, to this hour.
They just touched my life in a chance way ; they are all
buried and gone now ; they had counted more than their three-
score years then ; but like the wall whose builders were dead,
and the trees whose seed sprang into young tenderness longer
ago than men can remember, something of theirs was meant
for me. Smallness and foolishness, clefts and shadows of
old patience and slow, strong living ; among many things,
these are also even wrought and grown for those.
I did not know when or what I was taking ; it did not seem
to me as if the two things by which I remembered that sum-
mer-day had to do with each other ; the} 7 stayed side by side in
my mind with a seeming unfitness and impertinence, even ; one
meant so much to me, and the other so little ; I came, by and
by, to put them together.
We drove over in the wagon, Hope and I ; half an hour's
jog around the outskirts of the town ; in the borders of
woods, and along field-roads where there were no fences ; out
on a high edge of table-land, we came to it, a low, old
unpainted house, set on a brink, off which you looked in an
ama^e as to how you had gained such height, upon a wide-
rolling greenness of hill-swells that were like the waves of a
sea, and lost themselves in a hazy horizon-distance that de-
ceived you into truly thinking that there an ocean-line began.
Outside of everything it surely was. The road stopped
here ; there were half-a-dozen other road-branches, by whose
forks we had come; that stopped in like manner among these
hill-pastures, where you could see scattered, here and there,
white houses and grain-fields. They were like islands ; the
paths to them all viewless among the tossing green, as tracks
across tumultuous waters. Four women, for fifty years, iu
that solitary place ; that was the Polisher girlses story.
AVe went in, and upstairs, where Lodemy was busy with
her braiding work, finishing a great oval of bright colors.
The whole house was clean to a sweetness that let 3*011
smell the dry fragrance of its old timbers.
There were b'are, white floors, with dark, worn veins and
198 HITHERTO:
knots that patterned them. The best room had a bonghten
carpet ; strips of rag-weaving, and rounds and ovals of gay
braid were laid down here and there by bedsides, and before
dressing-tables ; there were enormous quilts of tiny patch-
work, and white spreads knit in shells. A dark little middle bed-
room opened mysteriously off the staircase, and beyond into
the long, sloping garret odorous with herbs and warm sun-
shine.
It was like going back through the half century past, be-
yond which these girls had been born and stopped. Stopped,
so that their very girlhood embalmed itself about them ; mum-
mied them, all four, between eighteen and twenty-five. If
there had been a gap, if they had ever gone away, if
anything that the world knew of had happened to them,
there would have been a measure for the time ; they would
not have been the " Polisher girls."
But what sort of life had this been, that had just stayed on,
and waited, and dried up like the old seasoning timbers?
What if my life should stop, and be the same for fifty
years ?
Life does not stop ; it is death then ; life goes .on, though
ring after ring of the tree-trunk, and leaf after leaf itf the
spring times, should be the same. There is more and more of
it ; and after a while its multiplied sameness is its breadth
and glory.
Did anybody think of this, looking at the Polisher girls,
wearing their hair turned up behind, with pathetic uncon-
sciousness, in diminished threads, just as it had been in its
young fulness? Little by little it had dwindled, and the
teeth of the high tortoise-shell combs come through. Little
by little, roundness and shape had fallen awaj r , and arms and
shoulders grown thin and flat ; cheeks hollowed above, and
become pensile beneath the jaws ; noses and chins sharpened ;
white teeth discolored, and crumbled, and vanished ; old fin-
gers that had done much work, turned withered, and knobby-
knuckled. Where was the breadth and glory that showed but
this? How could their tree of life stand in the midst of the
garden ?
A STCXY OF YESTERDAYS. 199
Remember and Submit ; Lodemy, and Frasie, standing for
Euphrasia, these were the " Polisher girlses " names.
The austerely religious father had chosen the two first ; his
wife's fancy had been permitted to indulge itself in the two
last.
Whether it were the influence of her name, and of careful
admonitions to live up t.o it, or her being the eldest, Remem-
ber, from her childhood, had been the thought-and-care-taker
of the household ; Submit, the patient, satisfied receiver of
things as they were ; Lodemy and Frasie represented the
enterprise and imagination of the family.
"Lodemy is rather changeable ; she and Frasie take notions
about things," Submit said to us that afternoon, apologizing
to Hope for the childishness of some alteration in the placing
of an old easy-chair since she had been there. Places were
all they could vary ; things were never substituted or renewed.
"It makes such a pleasant seat by the window, and leaves
that nice, square, open corner to stand round in. "We've
each of us a room, now, Frasie and I, on our own side of the
bed."
The high posts and the curtains shut them off from each
other ; they were, in fact, two dressing-rooms, with a closet
opening from each.
It gave her all the idea of spaciousness that a palace
could have done, this simple enlarging of a corner ; and
the brightness of the unworn carpet, where the chair had been,
was like an addition thrown out upon the old house. It was
quite as if she and Frasie had a suite of grand apartments.
Frasie took us aside downstaks, where a back door opened
upon a slope of green, when the nice tea was over which they
would have for us at five o'clock.
" 'Tisn't worth while to talk about it before Member and
Mittie ; they don't enter into it ; but Lodemy and I we plan it all
out together, and it's almost as good as if we'd got it. There's
such a look-out here ; if we had a stoop built on, a good,
broad one you know, with a roof and posts, and vines grow-
ing up, creepers and morning glories, or even beans and hops,
things that grow quick, and some grapes on the end, in the
200 HITHERTO :
sun. I declare we've had it over so much that I can see every
identical thing, and smell the grapes ; it's quite old in our
minds, you see, though we've never got the chance to do it.
We sit out here when it gets shady, and tell on about it till it
seems real. As true as j^ou live, it's so old now that I think
it a' most needs new shingling ! "
" Only the vines would get broken ! " reminded Lodemy.
" They might be careful, I should suppose. People do have
vines and new shingles."
" I think that's beautiful ! " cried Hope, her eyes shining.
" You can have so many things so ! "
" Oh, I wouldn't dare tell you all Frasie's and my non-
sense," said Lodemy, longing to talk of it, and warmed to
delight by Hope's S3 r mpathy.
" The houses, Demie ! "
"Whole houses? new ones?" asked Hope, drawing her
out.
" Yes, indeed ; Frasie's and mine. It's terrible silly, but
she and I always have talked so, ever since we were little.
Things might have been, you know ; and we've wondered about
it, and pieced it all out, till sometimes it seems almost as if
it was.
" Hers was over there on the hill, and mine among the pine-
trees in the hollow. Mine's a cottage, and hers is two-story,"
Miss Frasie went on, lapsing into the present tense uncon-
sciously. " Mine is straw-color, and hers is white ; with green
blinds, both of 'em. They're all furnished ; we've made lots
of pretty things ; we used to go about and see, and hear tell ;
and we'd always come back and plan over for ourselves. And
then "
" Frasie, you needn't tell everything ! "
" I don't know why, when it might have been. And they'd
all have been so good and pretty. We named them all. And
we know just how they looked and behaved, and needed to be
managed. I'm afraid, sometimes, it was making graven
images ; but I did fairly come to love them, certain true, I
did. I feel as if I'd somehow had 'em and lost 'em, and
might find 'ern again, yet."
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 201
How simple and silly these old girls had grown, or stayed !
" You can't see anything that there isn't," broke in Hope,
positively. " Not just so, perhaps ; but somehow."
That was what she always said ; and her eyes, with their
strange, golden color, always looked so glad.
All this kept running in my mind as we drove home again,
through the shade and the sunset.
These old, singular women, artless as children, telling us
their thoughts ; these " Polisher girls," who had lived on, not
outliving their young dreams ; who had been " in the middle,"
by " seeing, and hearing tell, and planning over for them-
selves ;" this word of Hope's, of things that must be,
" somehow ; " with it all mingled far, faint, beautiful per-
ceptions of possible good and joy that all my life had been
coming to me, as the South sends up sweet breaths into the
chill and hardness of the North.
Somewhere, and somehow.
I shrank from everything that was most nearly definite in
the peradventures of my life. They were points here and
there, of things most beautiful that I had known or imagined,
that started out upon me together, in a picture, a vision, with-
out a name.
I did not stop to ask myself whence they came, all pleas-
antness of pleasantest days and doings ; kindness and trust,
such as I had found and rested in with the Hathaways ; knowl-
edge, and truth, and high thought ; beauty, and ease, and
refinement, as I had tasted them with the Copes ; reliance,
even upon harsh, strong sense, and stern right-mindedness, as
they were with Aunt Ildy, when one could go with thon, and
not, by misdeed or misapprehension, counter ; cose} r house-
keeping and common work even, as Mrs. Hathaway and
Martha and Lucretia did it ; a reaching after all into which
these might crystallize, making 'a life for me, my own and
not another's. A distillation of all sweet sense, and hope, and
glad accomplishment ; over all, the awe and beauty and ten-
derness of a religious gratitude and faith.
Life might be so beautiful ; could one, then, think and see
vividly nothing that was not or that should not be?
202 HITHERTO :
Only I remembered the four women who had waited fifty
years ; with whom there had been time to have and to lose, in
fancy, a life-full of that which had never been given into their
hands.
Richard came out and took the horse, and Mrs. Hathaway
met us in the keeping-room.
" There is news for you, and a note," she said to me. " Mrs.
Cope has been here."
She took the note down from the frame of the looking-glass.
It was directed in Augusta Hare's hand.
Of all the wonders of modern mysticism, that which seems
to me least wonderful is the clairvoyant reading of sealed let-
ters. I think I never took one of importance into my hand
without a thrill of premonition. It is like looking into the
face of one who is about to speak. The flash comes before the
sound.
I might have laid that letter away, unopened, and it would
all have come to me. I did not wait for Mrs. Hathaway to
say another word. A strange disturbance ran all through me,
as if I felt it from the ends of my life, out of which some-
thing was wrenched.
I knew not why I should hate and dread the news ; but I
did. I went upstairs and put the note down on my table, and
took off my bonnet, and sat down on the farther side of the
room. I waited for it to be an old thing, before I took it up
and looked at it.
In ten minutes it was an old thing. I went back to it and
broke the seal, a pretty gilt one", of perfumed wax, and
read.
Augusta Hare was to be married to Grandon Cope.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 203
CHAPTER XVI.
THE EAST DOOR AT NIGHT.
IT changed everything. I could not tell why ; it had no
business to ; but it did, and I could not bear it.
It was nothing to me ; it never would have been ; I kept
srvying this over ; yet why did it put me all in a whirl to
think of? Why did I feel, as it were, all those possible fifty
years seething and stirring and protesting? As if a miserable
tangle had got into the world just in my little piece of its
time-pattern, and everything must break and snarl and go to
shreds ? As "if an angel had troubled the waters close beside
me, unaware, and another had stepped down before me?
A man like this to love a woman, and that woman to be
Augusta Hare !
She to be the " main thing," as her manner was, among
the Copes, and in the life of South Side ! Everything else to
go round and round her ! Something was possible for some-
body, that I had never even thought of, and she had got it. I
could not tell what it was in me, envy, hatred, malice, all
uncharitableness, but something roused up in me, and
raged. I could not have it so. It was not the right thing,
and should not have been. Something ought to have
interfered.
A man like this to love a woman so ! That he should
love all great, true things ; that he should search for God, and
find him in his works ; that he should lead others up to these
high loves and this holy reverence, this was fit, and beauti-
ful and blessed for all who came near, and whom he cared for,
kindly and a little. I would have been so glad to be but
one of these. But that he should care thus, that a blessed-
ness like this should come down about a woman's heart and
204: HITHERTO:
life, so near me ; that I should have this glimpse into what
might be for one, no better than I, and never for me, it
tossed me in a pain and unrest and rebellion that I could
neither comprehend nor control.
She put it on a little bit of paper, in a few common words,
as If it had been information of a pleasure party. She sealed
it up, deliberately and daintily, with scented wax, and sent it
to me. It was a thing to thrill and flash from heart and eyes ;
to fill and overflow a whole being, and. to touch others like a
tide from heaven ; to be told as spirits tell things, and in no
poor human words. If it had been like this, if she had
been like him, I could have been glad. I should not have
been reminded of myself, or had myself revealed to me. I
could have folded my hands and stood happy and humble,
near them. If they had called me friend, sister, I could
have walked with them in Paradise.
But I knew that I knew him better than she. I knew that
I How close it had come, and how it had passed me by,
this that I should never have thought of!
I had not loved ; but I had found out that I could have
loved. There was light blinding light on the whole long
enigma of life.
This was all that was to be for me, out of the fifty, or sixty,
or seventy years.
My life was one of the flawed and spoiled lives ; and I had
to live it out.
There are thousands of these lives ; they have to be, to
make up the world ; but when one finds out first that one's
own is to be among them, it is as if the world had been made
in vain. All the j^ears rise up and resist.
Take what was left and make the best of it? I had been
almost read}*- to marry Allard Cope. I knew now that I never
could. Him, last of all. He must never ask me.
I might turn to something tender and pitiful ; a mother's
Jove might have comforted me ; but I could not take up with a
lesser and different joy ; at the very side, too, of that other.
I looked thus deep into myself, by that blinding light ; and
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 205
found out this much certainly, that I could not arrive at
before.
There is always something to be done next ; there is always
something waiting ; a soul cannot go off into the deep with its
trouble and hide there, and lie passive and crushed, forgetting
life and flinging it behind, as it would like to do ; the body
sits within four walls of a room in somebody's house ; and the
next thing is to go downstairs again ; and pretty soon it will
be dinner, or tea, or breakfast-time.
" Took to her bed." They say this of one who flings down
the body ; it is all one can do ; there is only the bed, or the
grave. I could not take to my bed for nothing that anybody
knew of ; so I must go downstairs ; I must say something to
somebody about this news that I had got. I would rather say
it in the dark, than to go to bed, and have to get up and say
it in the morning.
I went out and stood at the stair-head. I wondered where
they all were, and who I should meet first. I would rather it
should have been Richard. The old, trusting feeling came
over me, of how sorry he would be to have me sorry.
I heard Martha singing and washing up the tea-things.
Suddenly, there came a clattering crash, and a silence.
Something a good many things, one would think fallen
and broken. A thing that hardly ever happened, out of Mar-
tha's hands. It seemed as if it happened now, on purpose for
me. At this moment I can believe it did. Ah, if we could
perceive what care is over us, tenderly, in small things,
smoothing them for our great needs, we should feel, in the
midst of them, the comfort of a Hand that is like a mother's !
Everybody would be there in a minute. When things
break everybody always is.
, I heard Mrs. Hathaway start up.
" "Why, Martha, do tell ! "What are you trying to do? " she
called out, in a gentle, kindly astonishment.
" Well I haven't made out much, after all," answered
Martha, in a stooping voice, quite cool and ironical, as her
way was. " I've only broken a tumbler and two plates,
206 HITHERTO :
and nicked the teapot-lid. If I'd had presence of mind,
and let go of the pot, I should have just done it."
Hope and Mrs. Hathaway laughed, and I ran downstairs.
I went out to the east door, where I had sat in the morning.
Richard came up to me from the gate where he had been
standing.
Nobody had begun to wonder yet about me. All my life
had contracted itself, with a spasm of pain, toward a point,
and I had felt into the years, and yet I had only been away
minutes.
I was in a hurry to speak then, in the shadow, since I must.
" I suppose you have heard the news, Richard? "
" About Miss Hare. Yes, do you like it? "
" No."
To this he answered nothing.
" I don't like it, Richard, and I don't want to talk about it.
It spoils South Side."
He would take care of it, now, for me. I should not have
to talk about it much.
" I'm sorry for that," said Richard. " South Side is a good
deal to you."
I wondered how much he meant by that. I wondered if it
had seemed likely to him that it would come to be any more
to me than it had been. If people had thought that, it must
be stopped. I could not stop it, now, too soon.
" It will be all Augusta, now. Everything is, where she is.
I don't think I could have her giving it out to me in little bits.
But that isn't it, entirety. I can't bear things that don't fit,
and that oughtn't to be. It makes me ache, as Martha says ;
as if I knew better, and ought to have helped it."
" Miss Hare and you were friends, though."
" Yes. I like Miss Hare. There is a very good sort of
liking that just belongs to her. But I don't worship her now,
as I did once. And there isn't enough of her to be "I
could not say " Mrs. Graudon Cope."
" We won't talk about it, if you please, Richard. It hurts
me. South Side is pretty much over for me ; that is all." .
I must have talked on, somehow, until I could say something
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 207
like this. Now it was done, I could not bear another word.
I only told Richard that I was tired, and had a headache, and
believed I would go to bed.
I went round and said good-night to Mrs. Hathaway and
Hope, and left Richard to tell them, if he chose, what I had
said to him.
THE SILENT SIDE.
" ' Pretty much over ? '
" Did she really mean that?
" Only a pleasant place for her that a thing like this can
spoil ?
" She can't care for him then. Poor fellow ! "
Richard Hathaway's big heart really had this in it for
Allard Cope, and it came first. Then, a great throb of joy,
that could not help itself, surged up.
" If I might try now, after all. She'll have so little left. If
I could only give her what she wants !
" Why can't there be enough of me, when I would give it all ?
" There would be enough, at last, if she could wait. It's the
pouring of the river that makes the sea. It was giving away
the little that was all, that fed five thousand men.
" Five loaves and two fishes.
" I wonder what put that into my head.
" Couldn't the Lord bless love as well as bread ? Couldn't
he make more of me, for her? If he bids me give, what else
is it for?
" God be good to me ! Make up the lack ! "
He did not know he said it. The word went straight up
out of his soul, without lip-shaping. He brought what he had
and laid it at God's feet. There it was grand and beautiful,
touched with the light of His countenance. A gift of all
heaven for any woman.
But just because it was a thing out of the pure soul-depths,
no moulding of brain or trick of speech, it was grand only
between himself and God. He could not take it in his hands
208 HITHERTO:
or on his lips to Anstiss Dolbeare. He could only say some
plain, poor, faltering words. What should she know by
them?
He could ask her to come and live at the Farm. He could
ask her to be his wife.
Suppose even she should come? Suppose he might have
her, all his life long, at his side? All his life long he might
not show her this unspoken beauty of his love that was in him.
Why are souls set so close, and yet so far? Why must they
always be asking after a sign, and no adequate sign be
given? Was that what it meant, partly? The sign of the
prophet Jonah? Must this heart of man go down into the
heart of the earth to be shown forth clearly only at its rising
a.gain ?
" God make it up to me and to her ! God tell her what I
cannot ! "
All this was in him, this perception and question and
prayer, without words. A Spirit moved with his spirit he
knew not whence, nor whither. By his great love, his weak-
ness and littleness touched the Everlasting Strength and
Fulness. So should the river flow till it should make a sea
where a dry place was. So, if she could believe and wait,
there should be enough for her. If only she could perceive
the gift, and what it was that came to her, and cease to
hanker after the signs.
Richard Hathaway thought he could say something to Hope
about it.
He did not know that if there is a woman-friend to whom
a man can speak of his love for another woman, she may be
too close to hear it without a pain. But if any woman could
stand close to a man in tender friendship and bear this, it was
Hope Devine.
She came out into the little porch after a while, for the
coolness. They were apt to sit there under the trees these
summer nights.
There were bright stars in the sky, and the long twilight
had not all faded away.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 209
He asked her if she would walk up the Long Orchard, to
the brook-pasture wall.
Mrs. Hathaway sat knitting in the dark, within. She
caught up a new, invisible thread, as she heard them move
away together, and knitted that also. Also in the dark.
She had come to love Hope Devine as a daughter. She
could see where there might be a rest for her boy. Pretty
Lucy Kilham had gone long ago, and that had never been
anything but a picture in the half-light of a mother's heart.
Anstiss Dolbeare's restless nature gave her a pain for her.
Now and then, Richard's watchfulness over it gave her a
dread for him. She looked at them often as she had looked
at them long ago, when they talked about the jasper. The
way for them both, still, she thought, was all through Mat-
thew, Mark, Luke, and John, before the Revelation should be
light about them.
Hope Devine she believed to be one of those with whom
God's grace began in infancy. She took religion as she took
all things else, into her clear, rejoicing nature, where it
needed not to be born with a pang. She simply did with a
gladness that which she was allowed and admonished to do.
She could not long for what there was not for her. She could
not shut her eyes, and see, as she had said in her childhood,
aught but what was truly there. Her prayers laid hold of
the kingdom of heaven, as her imagination of its dreams.
She did not doubt, or fear, or strive. She stood in the sun-
shine, and it illumined her through.
Is this a likening of the kingdom of heaven to a vision?
What is a vision, but a seeing? We call things dreams
that we may dare be unbelieving of them. We shut our eyes
and pray, and perhaps do scarcely better. God holdeth him
not guiltless who taketh his name in vain. The soul must
know that her Redeemer liveth.
Mrs. Hathaway would have been glad if Richard and this
girl could love each other. So she sat in the dark, and
knitted on, while the two went up the orchard together.
He began by telling her what Anstiss had said.
U
210 HITHERTO:
"She does not like it. It spoils her pleasure- with the
Copes."
After a pause, again, "I did not think that that could
have been. I thought there might have been news of her
and them some time."
" Of Allard Cope and her, you mean? "
"Yes."
"I thought she would find out that it could not do."
" Hope ! I must tell you. I was afraid of it. But I
waited to see how it would be. Do you think I ought to wait
any longer ? Do you think there would b.e any use ? "
See how he faltered with lip-language. See how little he
could tell any human ear of what his heart told Heaven.
How little he could paint of the crimson and the blue, the
suffering and the truth, into which he had gone up, and
stood steadfast.
This was his whole story of it ; of the red sunset that faded
into the gray ; of the ripe clover-blooms that had had their
June.
This was all he had to show for it ; for the waiting that
had been as years ; because it counted the years that were
coming, and had been ready to lengthen itself into them,
silentty, for her sake. And for the great, warm rapture of a
returning hope, he had only the faint asking, "Did she
think it would be of any use ? "
How was such a man as this to woo the woman he would
have, would gjlve himself to, rather? How should she
ever know ?
But Hope Devine knew. Because she could shut her eyes
and see.
Literally, it was her way when she wanted to see clear, to
put her hand up over her eyes, and shut them, and " think
hard ; " then " it came," as the rest of the story-book that had
not been printed, but in which she could read things beyond
the " finis."
Under the trees, here, in the dusk, she stopped short, and
put her fingers up against her brows, and bent her head, and
held her eyelids close. Richard stopped beside her, and
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 2ll
waited ; hushing himself and holding himself motionless after
that last word of his, as one does when one has disclosed a
heart-secret ; as if the whole air were full of that which had
gone forth, and a fresh vibration might flash into light, heaven
knows, how much more.
He understood her fashion also, and that she would speak
presently. He listened for her word with a tingling in every
fibre.
"Not quite yet. "Wait a little more. For her mind to
settle itself down, and things to get where they belong. If
you should speak like that now, you would only stir it all up
again. She is just finding out."
That was precisely like Hope. Precisely her way, plain
and practical, yet keen and far-seeing. Seeing more than
she could define, but grasping clearly the nearest point.
" Put your foot there" she said to herself or to another, in a
maze.
No flutter and bewilderment of personal consciousness, at
the kind of trust reposed in her, and of all that it suggested,
far and wide. No stopping, even, to look at herself, and see
how this thing concerned itself with, or seemed to, "her. All
that was behind ; she might come back to it ; but the first im-
pulse was outgoing.
It calmed Richard, and put him at his ease. The electric
air was stilled to an equilibrium, without a shock. A gener-
ous sympathy had taken in all that had so expanded itself,
almost to a pain, between them, and absorbed it to a single
thought that lay in her mind no stranger than in his ; a thing
true, and of course ; to be kept sacred, also. There was
always this rest with Hope.
" I am glad you know ; it has been all my life ; all my life
that could have that in it, I mean. It must have something
to do with hers."
He could say more, now ; he could almost let that silent
heart of his speak out.
" I am glad too," Hope said, with the voice of a spirit of
cheer. " I can't quite see how it will all be, but I can, almost.
There are beautiful things out in the years, Richard. Some
212 HITHERTO:
of them are always for everybody. And everybody is amongst
them, anyway."
" Hope ! you help me more than any one."
Richard took Hope's hand, and held it fast.
They stood at the' very top of the orchard, now, where the
broad wall of rocks stopped them, over which they looked
down the steep, green pasture-side at whose foot the brook
blundered along, plashing up sweet breaths into the night-air,
and breaking with a song, sung over and over, a little way
into the great silence that reached up to the stars.
"I would like to help you " and Hope ended there, and
did not say the final word that had been coining.
Why could she not say " always" ? Why did the word, un-
spoken, stand, as it were, and point with its finger, suddenly,
down those years where the beautiful things were, and shut
them off with the shadow of its pointing?
She did not wait to see. Hope could shut her eyes and
have visions. She could open them widely, also, upon present
things, and refuse, with an instinct, to see more.
She turned round, and faced homewards ; drawing her hand,
by the motion, awa}^ from Richard's.
"It does have to do with hers," she said, going back and
answering what he had said before. " She can't go quite
away from it. It is in her life, clear back, and far on. And
by and by, when she comes to know what it is, it will be
like the lighting of a lamp, Richard ; done all in a minute,
and shining through all the room."
Hope spoke in her peculiar, quick way ; the words hastening
themselves with the instantaneous urging of her thought ;
her perception was so glad, so beautiful ; there was such joy
in perception. To seize sight of things truly, and of how
their perfect and unerring relations lay ; to discern from afar
off the must be, and how this was the evolution of a harmony
that whispered itself from the beginning ; what if there
were nothing of it all immediately for her, or of her concern ?
She could think of it all more purely, more gladly, without
that touch of a hand; without any reminder of herself; she
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 213
did not try to guess wherefore ; she kept her soul straight
forward, and singly intent, and her act followed.
Mrs. Hathaway sat silent awhile after Hope came in and
her son had gone upstairs. And then she put a sudden, plain
question :
" What has Richard been saying to you, Hope? "
Hope answered as directly.
" Something about thoughts of his, ma'am ; which I could
not tell again, you know. Not but what he'd tell you, or
has, perhaps."
" I'm willing he should tell you his thoughts, child. Only
take care how you answer them. I just wanted to let you
know I ivas willing ; that was all. I should be well satisfied
if you both had something you could tell me. I didn't know
bat it might be coming, now ; and old folks are impatient.
When the candle's burnt low, you hurry to finish the chapter.
If it was to be God's will, Hope, it would be my mind, that
you should have your home here always."
When she had spoken it out thus, quite plainly, Mrs. Hatha-
way leaned herself back again composedly in her chair, rock-
ing gently to and fro, and her knitting-needles made their
clean, quick sound against each other. Otherwise there was
a perfect stillness in the dusky room.
Hope could not help the picture, now, that showed itself to
her in a sudden flash. There in the dark, just as if she had
shut her eyes and called it up of her own accord.
A picture of sunniness and full content for some one ; of
a strong, true, manly tenderness ; of a wide, cheery house ;
brimful of busy pleasantness and loving cares ; of a man and
woman leaving their young days behind, and living on into
ripe, happy years ; of a story beginning over again that had
begun over and over here, before ; of little Children growing
up ; of the old, bright " mother's room," out of which mother-
hood should not die away* of the big work-basket and the
Bible, used right on, by somebody, into another old age ; of
hands-full and heart-full, just the same only passed on,
household " keys of the kingdom of heaven" through womanly
apostleship ; these were Xl the beautiful things out in the
214 HITHERTO:
years ; " and suddenly Hope saw them plainly through Mrs.
Hathaway 's plain words, "It would be ray mind that you
should have your home here, alwaj-s."
" Always." That had been the word she could not speak.
" More help to .him than any one, always." Why was it
put so distinctly before her, as something that might be ?
When she knew so well what already was.
For a moment, between sure vision and clear honesty, she
was bewildered.
And then her faith came back. " You can't see anything
that there isn't, somehow" repeated itself to her. "Not
just so, but somehow"
'.' Mrs. Hathaway dear ma'am," she began again, coming
round and standing in the dark, close by the old lady's shoul-
der, " there was nothing like that in the thoughts he told
me. It was nothing about that. Don't think about it again,
please, so. I think I shall always be just among things. Help-
ing a little, perhaps. I think people can be gladdest, some-
times, of things that are just a little way off."
Only a glimpse had come to Hope Devine, a glimpse of
joy that might have been given ; a side-glance at a suffering
that she might have taken home to herself.
Self-love is a burning-glass that makes a focus in the heart.
One can wait for God without an ache ; looking on, not inward.
Hope never stopped to look at herself till she fixed a pain.
She said it was because she could not bear pain. She turned
away from it because she must be glad. Wretchedness would
kill her.
The next morning, when the breakfast work was done, she
went up the orchard, alone, to get green apples, while Mrs.
Hathaway was making fly-away crust for a beautiful great pie.
Up the Long O*rchard was a walk to do any one good, by
daylight or evening light. Now, the sun was warm among
the fruit, that began to look red and smell spicy on some early-
bearing trees. Warm, here and there, upo'n the short, white
clover that sprinkled the close turf; while the green branches,
reaching from side to side, made pleasant arcades, in whose
groins the rare little humming-birds had come and built their
A STORJ OF YESTERDAYS. 215
tiny velvet nests and flew murmuring about their young. These
long arcades of horizontal spreading apple-boughs stretched
up over the slope, aisle beside aisle, across two acres' width ;
there were three acres' measurement from the roadside to the
top wall ; it was a noble planting. The turf was soft and
crisp under the feet ; the bees and the humming-birds made a
continuous happy thrill upon the air ; the air itself was ten-
derly sweet.
Hope, living always " in the middle of her pasture," felt the
delight of it in the full present moment, as she walked slowly
on. But up at that top wall, built square and flat with double
and treble stones, and the filling in of every stray pebble that
had been gathered carefully out of the mellow orchard soil,
she stopped, sat down, and thoughts came to her. Partly out
of the pleasantness ; partly answering themselves to questions
that moved in the deeper life underlying and outreaching the
present, even in her blithely calm nature.
She had had a glimpse. She, as well as Anstiss Dolbeare.
Something just shown her and withdrawn. Withdrawn from
her own hands, the beauty and the joy of it not hidden from
eyes that look beyond the hand-reach.
She had thought too little of self, always, for anything to
have grown up in her that could turn, now, to an instant mis-
ery. She had seed, for a moment, a thing that might have
been. Only it was not ; and that was enough for her. That
which was not given was as if it were out of the world, for
her ; except that nothing was out of her world, or wholly re-
fused her, into which she could enter with that wide spirit-ap-
prehension which is the genius for living all life. It is the
meekness to which nothing is denied ; which blessedly inherits
the earth.
Not that this nature of hers was cold, inert, incapable of
fire or passion ; it would only never burn in upon itself ; it
was that divinely touched temperament, to which all fulness
is possible, but which can wait, finding such fulness in the
daily Will and Gift ; feeling the wealth also, out of which the
daily gift comes ; feeding upon grains that drop from an
exhaustless storehouse.
216 HITHERTO:
Up, there, where she could see out over'the Nine Hills, as they
were called, among which wound the busy brook that was
almost a little river of itself before it poured into the real
great river, and amid whose curves slept the beautiful double
Spectacle Pond, she talked with herself, admonishingly, in a
sort ; as if she knew things that self might long for, and that
should be met with a reason and a satisfying beforehand.
Because she could not chafe and discontent herself. Because
it was the very law of her life to find a cheer, and a sufficiency
at once, before she got restless.
"It's enough to be close to things," she said. "It's only
really to concern yourself with them. You haven't time to
live 'em all, and every one, for yourself. To know all about
anything is to have it, the good of it. I think it's eas} r for
the angels to be happy so. They know, you see. It's easiest of
all, for God.
" Perhaps he shows us things, sometimes, and puts them
away again for us, to give us by and by, when we are bigger ;
as mothers do with children's playthings that are too beautiful
for them to have right off.
" If all the sunshine was poured on us, we should be blinded
and burned. But we can see it on every little spear of grass,
and in the water-sparkles, and on the hills, and the white
clouds. That is the way we get it all.
"I'm glad yes, I'm glad I'm amongst it. And I have
got enough ; or else, of course, I should have more. Some-
thing will be coming by and by. You can't have more than
both hands full at once, Hope Devine ! And both hands are
full."
Corning down slowly, beneath the shade, picking up fair,
smooth, delicate green apples into her basket for the pie, she
came upon Richard, standing under the tree on whose lower
outmost bit of twig, in a crotch like a child's thumb and finger,
one of the humming-birds had built. Some inconceivably
tiny life must be nestling there in the little soft, lichen-covered
ball, that one could hardly find, even at the second looking ;
for about it, in and out among the leaves, darting in swift,
half-viewless lines and sweeps, fluttered a morsel of mother-
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 217
hood that dropped itself suddenly, you could not have seen
when or how, into its cunning home ; only the wee head and
the thread-like bill, straight and delicate like a pencilling
upon the air, showing themselves as it turned, alert and vigi-
lant, poising itself again for flight, after it had done, goodness
knows what, in a flash of time, in the wa}^ of breakfast or early
lunch.
Richard was looking up at it, watching it as he did all small
and tender things. A great strong man, with a heart in his
bosom full of its own longings and questions and pains, with
room in it none the less for what made that look on his face
of gentle interest in ttu's least bit of love and life, almost,
that could be visible together. There was a smile on his lips
and in his eyes, and he stood motionless lest the atom should
be scared. He had watched it so, day by day, ever since it
came there. He would not have had it disturbed or hurt for
the whole value of his orchard.
He stopped here on his way across to a part of his farm
bc3 r ond the brook-pasture where the meadow-hay was being
made. He had been off among his haymakers .early, before,
and they, had breakfasted at home without him. He and Hope
had not seen each other since they walked and talked together
here last night. There was a deeper color for a minute in the
fresh red-brown of his cheek as she came near.
" Good-morning, Hope. It's a good day for the hay," he said.
" It's a good day for everything," said Hope, brightly. "It's
a day to be real sure and happy in, I think."
. "It seems like a day for everything to go right in, doesn't it ? "
" Everything will go right, Richard, to-day, or some day."
" Hope ! " cried Richard, impulsively, " you are my dear
little friend ! "
He could as well be shy with a sunbeam as with Hope.
Her words and her look were like a radiant warmth to him,
that drew him out.
" I am so glad to be that, Richard. Thank you ! "
He met her clear, golden eyes for an instant, as she said
this, her face turned frankly to his. There was joy and truth
in them ; honesty and a tender peace.
218 HITHERTO:
His tall head bent down kindly toward her.
"I shall never," he said, " have anything "
" Much better than such friendliness -as yours," was the
meaning of what was coming. It was the feeling in him, and
the feeling trembled in his words.
"When a man and woman get so far as this it might be very
easy for them to get farther. Things might be so that this
gentle friendliness, so felt and owned, should come back to
fill a possible chill and deprivation. Many a woman, standing
between two as Hope stood, would have been not unmindful
or even improvident of this.
But the man of slow speech faltered again over his thought.
Honest Hope stopped him before he gave her that which she
might have waited for and taken.
" You will have it all" she said. " lean feel it coming for
you. I am certain how it will be. Certain."
She said it to herself as much as to him. Keeping some-
thing down so, that never should come up. Turning her back
upon something that she would not so much as look at.
" I won't I won't I won't I won't I won't ! " pulsed
itself in her resisting thought, as she ran, presently, down
toward the house with her apples for which Mrs. Hathaway
would be waiting.
" I won't I won't I won't "it went on underneath,
while she talked busily as soon as she got in, and flew about
for knife and dish, and hurried to pare and slice, and asked
questions, and set Martha chattering, and would not by any
means, for half an hour after that, let a silence or a thought-
fulness return upon her.
It went out of her so, whatever it was that might have
tempted her. She never knew -its form or face or prompting.
Only its shadow had cast itself before its coming, and she had
outrun it. Souls are kept so, in a celestial ignorance, that
will not know.
This was the girl who, six years before, had run with all her
childish might awa}' from a pleasure she was not sure that she
might take.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 219
CHAPTER XVII.
TELLING AUNT ILDY.
" I WOULD tell Aunt Ildy," Hope said to me.
Tell Aunt Ildy !
But the more I thought of it, the more it seemed the
only thing and the best.
She would blame me ; but I could not bear my own blame
any longer. I could almost solicit harshness as a relief ; as
one presses and grinds an aching tooth. I was to be disposed
of, too ; I was verily in sore perplexity where to put myself.
I could not stay any longer at the Farm ; I could not go home,
and let things be just as they had been. Nobody could help
me much, unless it were Aunt Ildy.
She was coming out that very afteroon to tea.
It had been a hard week with me since I had heard that
news. Troubles had come thickly. Everything hurried to a
crisis.
Allard Qope came over the very next day, and wanted to
drive me in to South Side, to take tea and see Augusta.
It was well, in one way, that there was more than one dis-
tastefulness in this. I could let a part of my unwillingness
be seen.
" What shall I do?" I cried, in a whisper, to Mrs. Hath-
away, catching her at the keeping-room door, on my way back
to the parlor where Allard was. " I don't want to go; with
him so."
" My dear, if you do go," said Mrs. Hathaway, with placid
deliberation, looking at me over her spectacles in her gentle,
discerning way, " you must be ready for any questions that
he may choose to ask you."
"O Mrs. Hathaway!" I gasped, in my despair, while I
220 HITHERTO:
trembled suddenly, and a hot shame poured its crimson up till
my eyes brimmed with the pain of it. I shut the door behind
us, then ; for, after that, there must be more said.
" Don't say so, please!"
"I don't say it, Anstiss. It says itself. Haven't you
known what you wanted to do about this?"
" There hasn't been anything that I could help. I couldn't
tell. You see I've known them always, and they've all been
kind. There, and here, Mrs. Hathaway, have been my
pleasant places. All I've had. But I don't want O Mrs.
Hathawa}^, what shall I do? " It came back to the first be-
seeching question.
" Did he ever take you to ride ? "
" No. There was never anything that I could help ; only
little things, like all the rest."
" This is different, then. You must stop here."
" But what can I say to him? All my life to let him be
such a friend, and then, all at once oh, dear ! It's hardest
for MS, isn't it, Mrs. Hathaway? "
" It would have to be a worse ' all at once,' you see, dear.
Yes ; it is pretty hard for us. But ' right ' is ' can,' always."
" Wrong is can't. That's as far as I can get. The other
part is dreadful."
" You ought to go, now,. Anstiss, dear ; the promise is for
everything : ' It shall be given you in that same hour what
you shall say, and how you shall speak.' Only look straight
at the right, and believe in the Help."
I held .up my face toward her, very pitifully it must have
been, for there were tears in her eyes as she kissed me. And
then 1 had to open the door, and walk across the hall to Allard
Cope.
There was such an awful difference between the Allard of
to-day and the Allard that I had just liked to be with in :ill
our bright, pleasant, common ways, before. A thought in a
man's heart like that which I could no longer ignore in Allard
Cope's for me, makes his presence terrible. Terrible, even
though one is glad, until the thought is spoken, and there can
no longer be a separate presence or a separate thought.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 221
" I am very sorry I have had to leave you waiting. But I
don't think I can go back to South Side with you. I don't
feel well to-day, indeed."
There was more than that in my face, though my face must
have confirmed my words. I saw the trouble that was there
reflected in Allard's. A trouble and a chill came into his.
After all, a word, even altogether aside from the point, can
do it. I was to blame. I might have done it before, more
kindly. I ought to have known my own mind. They were
right about it. Aunt Ildy was right.. I had no business to
wait, and say, How can I tell what may be ? I should have
let what was be seen. If I had looked straight at the right
from the beginning, and believed in the Help, this so bad
as this would not have been. I stood like a culprit before
Allard Cope.
" I am sorry," he said. " My mother and Augusta will be
sorry."
" Indeed, indeed, I am sorry too." The words came from
a deep place in my heart, and my lips trembled, do what I
would, as I spoke them. I felt myself pale and sad as I
looked at Allard, and held out my hand. " You are all so
kind to me ; too kind ; I never was worth it."
He knew that I was repentant for more than my refusal of
his kindness of to-day. One needs only be true. The truth
comes out, caring nothing for words. Any or none, it is all
the same. He knew at that moment that he might not " ask
me any question that he chose." At any rate, not now. A
man goes away and thinks over things like these, and reasons
them into such shape as he will, according to his tempera-
ment and the strength of his purpose. It might not be all
done with, yet, by any means. But, for just now, it was
averted.
"With a few more sentences of regret and courtesy on his
part, he was gone, presently. I had sent him away ; I had
begun the hard work that I must do, and the pain of my pun-
ishment was in my heart.
The next day after, Augusta came herself. Grandon had
222 HITHERTO :
been obliged to go down to H , and she had taken the car-
riage and come out.
I kissed her, and gave her my good wishes, of course, as
well as I could. And she put herself in the high light of a
very pretty picture for me, and told me, graciously, many
things out of her romance. And then she urged me about
coming to South Side, and pressed me close as to my refusal
of the day before.
" It won't quite do," she said. " There are times, even,
when a woman can't have a headache. You'll lose every-
thing, Anstiss," she ended, at last, plainly, " if you don't
take care."
Then I broke out passionately :
"I hope there isn't, I wish to Heaven, Augusta, there
weren't anything to lose ! "
She just sat, petrified.
Now, at any rate, she knew what I meant.
"At this last minute, Anstiss, you won't have Allard
Cope?"
" Oh, don't ! " I cried, as if my body had been wounded.
"What right has everybody to put it so? He never asked
me ; he never said a word like that ; he never shall."
" Then," said Augusta, getting up with a quiet, distant
displeasure, "you have been exceedingly wrong for years."
She was one of the family, now. She was going to be Mrs.
Grandon Cope. She was going to be Allard's sister.
They would all think like that. They had come out of
their way to be so very good to me, they had meant me a
life-long good, and this was what I had done.
She went away, and left me very unhappy. But I could
cry, and let my eyes be red. They knew what I had to
worry me. Neither they, nor I myself, need look further than
that. I could fling myself on the bed, and be miserable to
my heart's content.
Mrs. Hathaway came up from her dairy-work, which was
just done, with the perfume of it around her. She had been
working up rolls of fresh, sweet butter, and she had had her
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 223
little dairy-lunch, a glass of rich, yellow buttermilk. She
brought one up to me, and, seeing how I was, set it down on
the table, and came over to my side. Her breath was like
the clover breath of kine, and her soft, housewifely, motherly
hands were fragrant from their delicate employ, as she stooped
over and laid her fingers on my flushed forehead, smoothing
away the hair.
"Augusta is so safe, and satisfied, and hard," I said, out of
my sobs, and my pillow, and my crumpled pocket-handker-
chief. " It's so easy for her -to blame. She ought to blame
herself, too ; it has been half her doing."
" We ought all to think of the beam, dear. It might ac-
count for a good many of the motes."
" I do think of the beam. I've been selfish, and foolish,
and hateful. I can never get over it. I've lost half the
good of my life, and spoiled other people's good. And there's
nothing left."
" That's never true," said Mrs. Hathaway, " and we
haven't any right to say it. That's the biggest beam of all,
because it's unbelief. All the rest of your life in this world
is left ; and all heaven ; and all God. He is behind and be-
fore. He can go back of the thing that troubles us."
" He don't alter it, though. It's past and done."
" He sees our repentance before we come to it ourselves.
It all stands together with Him. You don't know what his
mercy has done, answering the prayer that was to be."
" Oh, if we could pray backwards ! " I hid my face deeper
against the pillows for a moment, as I said this, and then I
turned suddenly and confronted her.
" But you don't believe such things as this, Mrs. Hath-
awa}'. You believe in dreadful justice. You think some-
body must be punished."
" I know there is pain in the world, because of sin. I
know Who has come into the world and borne the pain
that was in it. I know that so our sins were laid on him.
And I know that he is mighty to help and to save ; even to
raise from the dead, and to forgive. When he forgave, he
took away the evil. He went forgiving and healing, the
224 HITHERTO :
two together, all the way through. That is all I know.
But that is peace."
" But you don't think it is for everybody. I never was
converted. I never could find out how to be."
" I don't suppose the man with the palsy, or the man pos-
sessed with the devils, found out how to be cured. . If they
had, they would have had no need to come to Jesus."
" I never could find out that I had been, then."
" The woman who touched the hem of his garment felt in her
body that she was healed of her plague. Once to feel him
close ; that is all, Anstiss ; then you must believe ; then you
will know that you are beginning to be healed."
Was that all?
And yet there was a step ; something to be done in the
spirit, that was still mystical to me. To. go to him as these
people went ; to fall down before him as he stood in the way,
one could do that ; and when the bodily healing came, one
could believe and glorify God. But he had passed into the
heavens ; whether heaven touched my spirit, or the spirit
dreamed and deluded itself, how could I tell ?
I believed that I knew something, faintly, of the gift of
God ; my heart swelled at a high thought, or the clearness of
a truth witnessed to again and again, till I was glad and sure.
I longed for purity, and strength, and harmony ; but this per-
sonal believing, this direct healing, should I ever come
to that?
Martha had asked me one day, in her downright literal way,
if I had ever experienced religion. She thought she had, I
knew ; I did not see why I was so far behind her.
" A little sometimes," I answered ; and I think I answered
truth.
"Hugh!" said Martha, bluffly ; " perhaps, then, the Lord
will save you a little sometimes."
And yet I -knew that it tvas a little sometimes, with the
best of them. They owned it ; they declared as much from
the pulpits ; they pra}'ed for " seasons of refreshing." Every-
thing did not come all at once, or stay continuously. What
did come more than had come to me ?
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 225
It was not beautiful thought I wanted, now ; it was not
recognition of wonderful types and meanings, and the gladness
of sight that takes them in. I had gone wi'ong ; I was not fit
to think of that New Jerusalem. I was down in the dust ; my
life was a mistake, and I had put a tangle into others' lives.
Who should help me out of this? Who should comfort and
justify me ? " Justify," set right ; that was what it meant ;
that was what I wanted. And then the phrase repeated itself
in my memory, "justification b}' faith ; " was this the way of it?
A full and healing forgiveness ? Was this the " believe and be
saved " of the Gospel ? Out of my own especial sin, and be-
wilderment, and misery?
I got this glimpse ; but it was a mind-glimpse. I stretched
forth my hands into the darkness ; but I did not feel Him pass-
ing by ; I did not hear Him ask, " What wilt thou? " I had no
sense of a staying of my plague.
I could not find the invisible Christ ; I wanted a soothing
and a tenderness that should come to me by tones and looks ;
I wanted somebody, to say words of help and comfort and re-
assurance.
Besides that, I wanted somebody to tell me just what I
ought to do.
I wanted it more before those next days were over.
What possessed me ? And what possessed Richard Hatha-
way ? As true as I live, I had never had a thought of this
before. I went up the Long Orchard. It was in the late
afternoon. Not that same day ; but several days later.
I went up alone, and stood by the broad wall, and leaned
upon it.
There seemed to be so much rest over among the hills.
They were full of cradles and shadows. I sent my restless
thought and pain out there, as if I could lay it down so, like
a tired thing. I tossed in spirit among those soft green cush-
ions and gentle hollows. That is the correspondence and sug-
gestion ; that is what the earth bends and swells and dints for ;
the eye and the heart would weary, like a bird at sea, over
dead, pitiless plains.
I was away off there, unmindful of what was coming near.
15
226 HITHERTO:
Richard, climbing the pasture-side toward roe from his meadow
mowings, came close before I knew.
He came down along the wall from above, where he reached
the brow ; he stopped beside me, on the other side. There
was a wall between us ; it was truer than he knew.
And yet it was a comfort having him there, just that space
off.
I think he hardly knew what to begin to say, now he had
come there ; so he was awkwardly still for a minute or two.
Then he had to say something, for he had not come without a
meaning ; and it_could not be a common word of unmeaning
after that pause.
" You're worrying away the good of Broadfields, Anstiss ;
you won't get the rest you came for." He remembered that
I bad said that; he laid away words in his heart so, and
thought them over.
" I can't help it, Richard ; I've gone wrong. You know
what it is ; everybody knows. I didn't mean it ; I didn't know
what I meant ; but I ought to have known. Everybody blames
me."
" I don't blame you ; you'll know next time."
He spoke before he thought ; words of common usage such
as people say in comfort for common mistakes. Then some-
thing in his own speech seemed to startle him, with an unin-
tended application.
" I mean, well, we all have to get wisdom by paying for
it."
" If that was all ! If other people didn't have to pay ! "
" That's where it costs."
-
He paused. He could not help me there.
" I'm sorry, Nansie. I'm sorry for you and everybody.
But I don't know as you could help it ; I don't know as you
need to blame yourself so much."
" Yes, you do, Richard. You know you would blame me
if it was your place."
There was no grammar in my blundering speech, of which I
felt the strangeness as I made it ; but he understood ; he put
himself in the place I thought of.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 227
" I don't know, Anstiss ; I shouldn't have much left to
blame with ; it would take the whole of me to bear it, I
think."
What had I done ? What did he mean ? What was I rush-
ing upon now ? I hurried to say something different.
" I wish I knew what I ought to do. I think I should like
to go away somewhere. To some still place where nobody
would come. I wonder " and I laughed, nervously, at what
suggested itself, as I still looked off there among the quiet
hills " if the Polisher girls would take me to board ! "
I don't think Richard heard what I said. He was intent
upon what had been spoken just before.
" I never will blame you, Anstiss ; I didn't suppose I
should say anything about it yet awhile ; but I've always been
thinking of it ; could 3'ou don't you think 3 r ou might be
contented at the Farm? With me? Mightn't we get along
together as well as the rest of the world ? "
[O Richard ! Silently, his heart was brimful of beautiful
things ; of thoughts of how he would take Anstiss to his arms,
and shelter her, and make her home glad for her all her life-
long, if she would only let him ; of tender longing to smooth
every roughness, and soothe every pain for her ; of humble
self-disparagement that would not let him be eloquent in
words ; of the image of a joy that all " the rest of the world "
could neither hold nor conceive of ; of a prayer to God in this
tremulous poise of fate, that this great joy might come to
him ; of a manly gathering of himself to bear what might be
instead ; of generous will that, come what might, he would
keep his word and not blame her ; and this was the best he
could do with it ! When the well is deep, there is so often
nothing to draw with !]
" O Richard ! No no ! Take it back, please ! "
We stood there, perfectly silent, unmoving. Neither dared
remind the other, by the lifting of a linger, of, a painful pres-
ence. Our words that we had .spoken went out into the air,
and sent their viewless vibrations far off among the hills.
228 HITHERTO:
Into the world and space ; full of the words and cries and
moans of men, the confused and crowded writing of human
life.
[Anstiss did not see how pale he grew ; how the lips set
themselves, and still trembled ; how, holding his body motion-
less, the whole man yet visibly reeled.]
I should not have dared look up if it had been a year ; it
seemed a time I could not measure, that we stood so. Then
Richard put his hand out across the wall that was between us.
He lifted mine, and closed his fingers firmly round it.
" It is taken back, Anstiss."
That was all he said. He laid my hand down, slowly,
tenderly, upon the stones where it had been before. Laid it
down, like a thing he gave up, gently. And then he turned
back, and walked away, swiftly, down the slope over which he
had climbed to me, and out of sight.
My hand, that I had refused him, lay there, dropped from
loving fingers, upon the rough stones, where it had been
before.
What different could I have said ? If Hi chard could only
have given me less or more ! He was good, too good for
me ; and yet he asked me into such a mere every-day life !
" To get along as well as the rest of the world ; " ah, if I
put my hand into any man's, I wanted so that it should be to
climb! To get above the rest of the world; I wanted, at
least, that he should long for this, as I did, and more ; that
looking up to him I should be looking up in the line that
reaches from earth to heaven ; up the slope of the beautiful
ladder whereon the angels of God go up and down.
He could give me home and peace, peace that should reach
just as deep, and only, as the circumstance of day by day ;
but the .deep-sea peace, who should find that for me ?
What was I that I should demand so much ? Yet to be
more, this was just why I demanded it. It would not have
been right to marry Richard Hathaway.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 229
I might never love, and be beloved, as my nature craved.
"Well, that was God's denying. He had shown me what love
and life might be, and he hud said, It is not for thee.
The world is fall ; but in. it all I might not, in a lifetime,
come face to face with a man of such kingly spirit and pres-
ence as I dreamed of as I had met in Granclon Cope.
I could not but think of him ; he represented to me my
ideal ; yet it was not a disappointed hope or imagination,
even, that connected itself, directl}*, with him. I had been
almost content to be his sister ; to live with one nearer my
own level, under the benediction of such brotherhood ; to grow
toward the height with one who looked toward it as well as I.
If he had stayed as he was ; if he could have always seemed
to me something so above all common love and liking, I should
never have known better ; but that he should love, and that
his love should be Augusta Hare ! This it was that wakened
me ; that shook roughly all my half-formed thought and pur-
pose ; that threw into a confusion of disintegration all the
half-crystallized possibilities of my life.
And after this, that Richard dear, kind, good, common-
place Richard should come and ask me if " we might not
get along together as well as the rest of the world ! " I could
but cry out the " No no ! " that was such a thrust of cruel
pain ; but that was the only true answer to his word.
Yet I lay wakeful all that night, suffering the rebound of
my own thrust. Why should nobody be happy ? Why should
one not only be denied, but be forced to deny othei's? If I
could have been noble enough, might I not have set self aside,
and done my best for so good a man as Richard Hathaway ?
Need I, at any rate, have been so cruelly abrupt? Need I
have shouted that reiterated "No!" so instantly into his
ears ? I had acted from the self-impulse, only ; I had been
cruel.
Hope knew I was awake and restless ; she gave over sleep
herself in the early morning, and tried to say kind woi'ds to
me ; she thought I was worrying still over the old story.
I lay still iu bed, while she got up at last, and moved about
the room, dressing. When she was nearly ready, she turned
230 HITHERTO:
round to me from the toilet glass, in which I suppose she had
been watching my face more than her own.
" Anstiss, dear, you have had no good of your night ; you
had better lie and sleep, and let me bring j'our breakfast up."
That word about breakfast, and the thought of going down-
stairs, sent the shock of it all through me again.
" I don't care for sleep, Hope, or breakfast either," I cried
out ; " but I can't go down. It is more than you know ; I
can't see Richard to-day. Hope, I've treated him shame-
fully ! "
She dropped her hand, with the comb in it, down upon the
table. She pressed against it, and lifted herself up, tall and
straight and indignant, in her surprise. Something in the
light of her clear eyes was like a blaze, and frightened me.
" Then you've treated shamefully the lovingest, patientest,
grand-heartedest man that breathes."
She said it slowl}-, word after word, and then she was quite
silent, and turned away from me again.
I would not say a syllable to justifj^ myself, for I did not
think I had the right ; but neither would I lie there, a crushed,
ailing thing. I got up with a kind of dignity, and began .to
dress.
I would not cringe utterly under her rebuke ; for there was
a half of me yet noble enough to stand in her own attitude
over the other half. I could rebuke myself; so I was not
wholly mean.
In a pride like this I kept silence, also, awhile ; but if I
would not let my worse self quarrel with Hope's generous
anger, neither would I permit that it should seem so. Besides,
I could ill afford, at this moment, to lose her love and counsel.
I let it stand so, as a thing neither disputed nor abjectty
acknowledged ; and I said, after a while, as one who had still
a claim to credit for. a will to act rightly, " Hope, I need
advice. I can't stay here. If I go home, nobody knows
there, and things will be hard. I am all alone with my
troubles."
I said it quietly, and with a certain strength. I would not
plead for any mercy or friendship.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 231
Then it was that she answered me, not unkindly, "If I
were you, Anstiss, I would tell the Avhole to Aunt Ildy." At
the moment I threw it aside, as a refusal of all counsel. It
went for nothing ; yet I know it was Hope's best thought for
me. I know she would, in my place, have done that very
thing. She had never seen Aunt Hdy quite as I did. She
had a genius for discerning the good and the available in
people, as she discerned it in things. Nothing was absolute
rags and hopelessness to her. There was nothing that could
not be " made to do." She drew straight to the sterling
metal in the midst of the ore, like a loadstone. She made for
that ; she placed herself in relation to that alone, ignoring
the rest.
She and Miss Chism were good friends. Aunt Ildy's
strong uprightness even her hardness had a charm for
Hope Devine.
"You knew what to calculate upon, with her," she said.
" She expected everybody to do just right, that was all. There
was something fine in her not being satisfied with anything
else. It had been hard for a little thoughtless child, very
like.; but a woman grown might be glad of a friend like her."
" See how good she would be to you if any real, great
trouble a trouble such as she could understand was to
come to you. She is just one of that kind."
So Hope had said, one day, and so, now, I know she really
thought that the best thing I could do would be to tell Aunt
Ildy.
But while this thought lay discarded, for the time, in my
mind, something else possessed me, half-aggrieved as I was
with Hope, and longing truly, also^that some good and com-
fort, that I could not give, should come to Richard Hathaway.
Hope was kind, but there was a shade of reproachful grav-
ity and reserve that stayed about her. It was hard for me to
bear this ; it irritated me.
All at once, when we were alone afterward, that morning,
catching this look of hers, and remembering her words of him
so deliberately and protractedly superlative, I spoke out reck-
lessly.
232 HITHERTO:
" Hope, why don't you marry him yourself ? "
Hope's cheeks were on fire, but her eyes looked large and
calm, straight through me.
"I don't think you mean that, Anstiss," she said, proudly.
"No, I didn't, I don't mean it, so, Hope. I beg your
pardon, it was half in joke ; but I do mean it is the best thing
I could wish for him ; and I do wish him good ; I think he
will ask you some time. He doesn't know how much you are
to him. When he does, ask, I mean, if you can help it,
don't say no. He deserves you ; he is too good for me."
The color stayed in her cheeks ; her eyes softened a little. .
" You have no right to suppose such a thing ; but I should
say no."
" You can't tell, now, Hope."
" I can ; because I couldn't take a thing that didn't belong
to me, not even if I wanted it. Not even if I picked it up in
the dust, knowing who the owner was."
" But if the owner wasn't fit to have it ; if it had been left
behind, or thrown away ? "
" If they didn't know, if it was a child, perhaps, I'd
keep it as safe as I could till they found out better, and
wanted it, and came back for it ; it wouldn't be mine."
Hope did not stop for the parsing ; but it was only the ob-
jective pronoun that was confused ; in the light of her pure
honesty, the possessive case was clear.
I was ashamed of my unconsidered impertinence ; yet I
was all the more sure of my inspiration. I was sure it would
be a good thing if Richard Hathaway and Hope Devine were
married.
Before Aunt Ildy came "driving out to the Farm that after-
noon in Wimbish's high, old-fashioned, two-wheeled chaise,.!
had made up my mind.
There were two hours before tea, and an hour after ; I
should have plenty of time.
Did anybody ever try the experiment of getting an opportu-
nity to say half-a-dozen sentences to an individual, by that
person's self, and find in three hours, or days, or weeks, even,
that there was plenty of time ?
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 233
I went upstairs with her, into the south-west chamber,
while she changed her cup. I stood, gathering myself for the
plunge, and waited ; watching the little white balls on the
curtain-fringes bobbing in the wind, just as I had watched
them that day, 3 T ears ago, when I had had to tell about the
bonnet. She stood just where she stood then, and was put-
ting pins in her cap in the selfsame way, with the selfsame
angle in her elbow.
I waited for the elbow to come down ; for there is no use in
speaking to any woman in that position, putting a critical pin
into hair or cap, with all the circulation and respiration
stopped, and nerves in a twist, by the upward reach and strain
in a tight dress. Anj'body who would take anybody's else
affairs into consideration, under such circumstances, would
have no cap to pin, because she would be nothing else than
an angel with wings and long hair.
By the time the elbow came down, Mrs. Hathaway came
in, and when we all went downstairs we seated ourselves in
the keeping-room with our work, and began to " spend the
afternoon." Once, when Mrs. Hathaway went out, for a few
hospitably demanded minutes, and Hope followed presently, I
think with remembrance of the opportunity I needed, Martha
seized the chance for a purpose of her own, which required no
preparation of nerve ; only a glance from side to side, with
her head very much in advance of the rest of her, as she came
in reconnoitring to see if the coast were clear.
" Oh ! Miss Chism, you air at lezhure, aint you? I come
in a-purpose to see. I was goin' to ask a great obleedgement
of you. You see, I want a gown, a calicker gown ; an' there
aint no thing o' the name . or natur' that you couldn't shoot
straws through, an' that wouldn't make you cross-e} T ed to
look at, in Broadfields village. I wanted to see if you'd buy
me one in New Oxford, an' let Richard take it next time he's
in. I'm willin' to go as fur as two an' sixpence for a good
English calicker, spry-colored, an' tast}', an' one that'll wash.
An' there's the money. Nine yards three dullars an'
four an' sixpence. I shan't begrudge it if you pay the
234 HITHERTO :
whole : but if you can get it any more reasonable, so much
the better."
By the time the money was unrolled from the tight crush
of Martha's palm, and spread out, and handed over to Miss
Chism, two bank-notes, a new silver American half, and a
Spanish quarter, and Martha had once more acknowledged
the obleedgement, and reiterated the stipulation that the calico
should be " spry-colored," and finally departed, Mrs. Hatha-
way was in again ; and after that I was not left alone with
Aunt Ildy until just before we were called to tea.
It was no time then to begin. "VVe could smell the hot,
sweet, spicy flapjacks coming in from the kitchen. But I be-
spoke an opportunity when tea should be over. I touched
Miss Chism's arm as she was going out before me ; and made
her stop an instant.
" I think, Aunt Ildy, that I'd better go home with you to-
night, perhaps. I want to tell you something, after tea.
Something that rather worries me," I added, lest she should
imagine a communication of some quite contrary char-
acter.
She looked at me half sharply, for a second, with her
" What now ? " expression ; but I think she only saw in my
face an appeal and a confidence that touched her kindly ; for
she uttered a slow, non-committal, not unfriendly, u Well ! "
unbent her brows, and let me come beside her as we left the
room. Afterwards she helped me to flapjacks at the table in
a way as if she appreciated my reliance on her good-will.
It was often very much according to Hope's apprehension
of her ; that is, if one could only think in time. If you con-
fided in her, if you gave her credit for good feeling, and
trusted to it, if you sought her advice; above all, if you
followed it submissively, you were on the sunny side, then.
You were " en rapport ; " and all the strength of her stern,
stanch nature* was thrown with and for, instead of against,
you. It was no mean dependence. When tea was over, Mrs.
Hathawaj r proposed going down the garden, or up the
orchard ; which would Ildy like?
"Oh, it don't make any odds to me. Down the garden, I
A S'fORY OF YESTERDAYS. 235
guess ; but I want Anstiss upstairs, first, a minute or two.
You needn't wait. We'll come down."
So I followed her, feeling it harder, so, for the deliberation
and expectancy ; yet easier, also, for Aunt Ildy's prepossessed
benignity. Poor Aunt Ildy ! After all, she was left very
much in her own hard, single, old life !
I determined to speak straight to what I wanted, whether
it were there or not. To a hidden love for me in her heart ; to
a hidden sympathetic possibility.
" Aunt lid}'," I began, " I'm in a real trouble. I want you
to tell me what to do. I ought to have prevented it before ; I
wish I had asked you sooner. I know what Allard Cope
means, now ; and I know that I can only be sorry for it, and
wish he wouldn't mean it."
" Has he said anything? "
" No ; but he would have. I stopped it ; I wouldn't ride
to South Side with him. Mrs. Hathaway saw ; she said I
oughtn't unless "
" That won't stop it, if he's got it to say."
" I think he understood ; and besides Augusta Hare has
been here ; and she said things. I answered her so that
she knows. I don't believe he'd come out here again."
"Then why don't you stay? It's the best place. I don't
see but it's all over."
Something like a shadow of hardness came again over Aunt
Ildy's face. Something her sympathy, or her intent to
help that had been coming, stopped itself short, and fell
back, as it were, in her eyes ; took itself back ; not wanted.
As if she had run to a fire, and found that somebody else had
put it out. Aunt Ildy would not have liked to do that.
"O Aunt Ildy!" I hastened out with, "that's only the
beginning ! That isn't the worst. Aunt Ildy Richard
Hathaway wants me to marry him, too, and I can't ! "
"Too? I should presume not." Aunt Ildy smiled in a
rather cast-iron way, at her own grammatical quickness and
wit. Then she grew grave again, with a softening of real
concern in her face.
" I can't stay here, you see," I said. " And what shall I
236 HITHERTO:
do at home? They'll expect me at South Side. Perhaps
they'll send Allard over. There'll be all sorts of things.
There doesn't seem to be any place for me."
I do not know why she did not blame me. Perhaps because a
difficulty always roused her whole energy to grapple with itself;
perhaps because, now that the realities of life had come to me so
suddenly and thickly, she felt a sort of respect for my indivual-
ity. In my new relation to great questions, I stood passed
out of my familiar childishness and inferiority in a sort of
strangerhood, all at once. I had affairs ; responsibilities ; I was
no longer in mere training and anticipation. I was not a child,
to be tutored, I was a woman, to be counselled ; I had come
to her with confidence. At that moment Aunt Ildy took a
new attitude toward me.
She had done, all these years, what she thought was "good
for me ; " she had tried, with her rigid processes, to prepare
me for life. Now life, that has its separate burden for each,
was upon me. Her office was, as it were, over. She could
set aside discipline, and be my friend. Especially, as I so en-
treated it. I think she felt my coming to her to be her re-
ward. And doubtless it was. No good that has been truly
meant, though in the midst of mistakes, shall, in any upshot
of life, be utterly lost. In the end of things the angels shall
always come and gather the wheat from among the tares.
I felt light of heart when my telling was over. Since Aunt
Hdy did not condemn me, she was sure for help. I had laid
my burden on ample shoulders.
" The first thing," she said, " is for you to go home with
me to-night, of course. You can be packing up your things
while I go down to Abby Hathaway. And mind and turn
your skirts before you fold your gowns. And double the
sleeves in the middle and pull them out flat. I'll see to some-
thing for you. Does Mrs. Hathaway know?"
" Not from me."
" I shan't tell her. You needn't pack up any worries. You
can get them anywhere as you go along."
" You are very kind, Aunt Ildy," I said, with my head in
the closet, beginning to take down dresses. There was a little
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 237
oddness in my voice, I knew ; hut the smother of the closet
covered that. I had learned not to be demonstrative with
Aunt Ildy. Actions were better than words, was her doctrine.
I .could only determine within myself to roll up her lavender
satin cap-strings very carefully, and to have all her things
comfortably ready for her downstairs, when she came in ; and
to be very particular about my own foldings as she had charged
me. For the rest, I would watch opportunity.
She was laying the best cap on the bed, and putting on her
bonnet cap, over which she tied a handkerchief for her garden
walk. She said nothing at all to my last words until she was
just going out of the door. Then she turned her head over
her shoulder.
u That depends on behavior. "When people deserve kind-
ness, they get it. Pinch those ruffles up with your thumb and
finger. You've kept that pink muslin pretty nice." Aunt
Ildy never aimed direct at the thing that most pleased her,
in her commendations ; she always carromed. She was satis-
fied with me to-night. She thought I had behaved well. I
was half of good cheer, even in the midst of my troubles.
But it was hard to bear when Richard Hathaway, doing just
as he always had done, and always, I knew, Avould do, brought
round Aunt Ildy's horse and chaise, and helped us in, holding
the reins till we were seated ; and then shook hands, friendly
and warmly, with her first, and then with me. Not the least
difference ; no reminder in the grasp or in the loosing ; he had
" taken it all back." He kept it back out of his face, even.
He never would trouble me with it again. I knew that I left
a noble heart there behind me, holding its own pain, silently.
At that moment, at least, I knew this of Richard Hathaway.
Yet the way in which he bore himself comforted me, in
spite of my knowledge, already ; just as he meant it should.
The reaction of rest began to come, after the agitations of
so many days ; I began to be drawn from my introspections
to things outside, which took me almost with surprise that
they should still be there. The evening air blew calm and
cool ; the old road lay between its familiar woods and fields ;
Aunt Ildy slapped the reins up and down on the back of
238 IIITHEETO :
Wimbish's easy-going roan ; she left me in silent peace for a
whole mile or more. All that way the rhythm of the slow-
dropping hoofs had been lulling my busy thoughts, and hush-
ing sorry ones away to sleep ; heart and brain cannot throb
and hurry to such a measurement as that. Truly as I grieved
for what I had done, I seemed to have left it more than a mile
behind me.
Aunt Ildy spoke at last.
" I've been thinking," she said, holding the reins up very
high and tight, one in each hand, and keeping her eyes un-
swervingly upon the horse's ears, as he took a mild trot, com-
ing successfully out of a down-hill creep upon a stretch of
safe, level, meadow road. " I've been thinking it over. How
should you like to go to Boston ? "
It was like the thunder-clap Avith which the genie came with
gifts, into the " Arabian Nights."
That she should have thought of this on my behalf ! That
such a thing should be " worth while " for me ! It was as if
I had died, and found out that they would have mourning and
a headstone for me, as to which I had wondered in my childish
days. I shrank within myself with fear of too ready appro-
priation of such consequence ; with humility and undesert. I
always did so ; I believe I should have done so in my grave,
if I could know they were making any fuss about me over-
head.
" Well ! " shot Miss Chism, sharply, into my silence.
" O Aunt Ildy, what can I say? It's a great deal too much
to do for me. And it's it's the kindness I care for ! "
" H?igh ! " said Miss Ildy, through her nose. But those
four consonants hel'd her displeasure ; it was not in her face.
" There's no need of any highfalutin about it, as I know of.
It wasn't all for you. I had some thoughts of going, before.
You haven't answered me yet."
It was very hard to be just properly and spontaneously
grateful, and yet not to assume too much. Of course it could
not have all been for me. But she did not make her cake all
for me. By no means ; Miss Chism was careful of her cake,
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 239
and kept it mostly for worth-while occasions ; yet sometimes
she would cut me a piece and offer it ; then I was all the more
thankful. ,
I calmed down my effusion instantly, however.
" Whether I would like it," said I, suppressing the excla-
mation point, and with as matter-of-fact intonation as a dis-
trict school-child repeating the word before spelling. "Yes,
Aunt Ildy, I just exactly should."
" Then I've about made up my mind that you just exactly
shall. That is, if nothing happens. I'm going to see about
it. You'll want new sleeves to your stripid muslin-de-laine ;
it'll do to travel in, and to wear cool days."
This was almost too ordinary and comfortable ; it brought
my self-reproaches back. I began to be jealous of her not blam-
ing me ; I was getting off too easily ; I could not ignore as she
did. In all this there had not been a word of poor Eichard
Hathaway, and what I had done to him.
" Only," I said, " I have no right to pleasant things ; I have
made two people unhappy ; I can't forget that."
" Well, I don't know," she answered, very coolly. " There
isn't much telling, perhaps, about that part. Maybe it's more
than an even chance they'll both get over it."
I was thrown back again, as having assumed too much.
" At any rate, a girl can't marry everybody that asks her,
and everybody else ' too,' " she went on, quoting my word, and
reproducing the cast-iron smile. " Somebody has got to
stand aside. And you can't say no until you are asked. It's
best, when you can, to have it straight out and settle it. I
hate things daggling on tenterhooks."
Aunt Ildy was thoroughly on my side, for once. It was
manifest that she was, for some reason, well content with
things as they had fallen out. And I could not help drawing,
silently, two other inferences frojtn her cheeriness, not to say
slight exhilaration of spirit. That she had not known much
of this pain of saying u no," herself; or if she had, that it was
in the comfortable long ago, where pain fades out and only
pleasantness stands. That her lovers had got bravely over it.
Also, that it might be possible she was rather glad than other-
240 HITHERTO:
wise, after all, to keep me at home a little longer. Out of her
narrow living, perhaps she would have missed even me.
The mere contingenc}^ of this drew me toward her. I sat,
resolving upon how I would do eveiything henceforth, for her
and Uncle Royle ; how I would bear all her hardness patiently,
and keep up zealously to all her requirements ; never forget-
ting that she had stood by me, when my trouble came.
A faint flavor suggests more than satiety can give. A very
little gentleness, an ever so small relaxing, toward me from
Aunt Ildy, stirred me more than tender kisses and embraces
from another. I kissed and embraced her that night in my
heart.
It went on so through the whole. I had never, apparently,
made such a stroke for nryself in my life.
We had no more talk, all the way into New Oxford ; Uncle
Royle helped us out at the street door, and carried my box
upstairs. Then he drove the horse back to Wimbish's stable ;
and Aunt Ildy asked me if I would have any thing to eat before
I went to bed. That finished it with me for the night. I
thanked her, and said no ; but I went upstairs, filled ; fed in
my heart with almost more than I could hold of unwonted
tenderness.
She treated me like company ; almost like a stranger. In
one way, perhaps, I had become as a stranger, with a strange
interest, instead of a familiar contempt. I was a girl with a
love-history about me ; I was something quite different from
little Anstiss Dolbeare ; for once, I was " too big a girl," in a
way greatly to my own advantage.
Aunt Ildy's ideas and purposes, especiallj' of good will,
were like powder-blasting ; a great deal of quiet, perhaps care-
fully secret drilling, that took a long time ; then a sudden
touch, Heaven knew how, to the few grains of some quality of
generous expansiveness that ^she kept by her disguised in or-
dinary in a black inertness ; then a sudden outcome, explosive,
from which one could only stand aside. She would by no
means let you draw close. It was a hauds-off, gunpowder
beneficence.
She did not say a word more to me of our journey for two
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 241
days ; then, all at once, over some scalding sweet-pickle she
was watching ajt the kitchen fire, she lifted up her head and
spoke :
" I've about made up my mind to another thing. Your
uncle hasn't any objection, and I shall ask Abby Hathaway
to let Hope Devine go with us. Hand me the skimmer
quick ! There now the allspice. You may call Lucretia
in to lift the kettle off. Fly round ! "
16
242 HITHERTO :
CHAPTER XVHI.
BOSTON ; AND THE HOLGATES.
NEITHER Hope Devine nor I had ever been a journey in the
cars. The railroads were yet a novelty. We had to go down
to Palmer in the stage, a half-day's ride ; and beyond that the
steam-rush of three hours was a wonder and an excitement.
People felt, then, all the travel that was concentrated so
suddenly into such little space of time, as they have forgot
to feel it now. Nobody calls it travelling to go from Boston
to Berkshire, to-day ; it is only stepping through the house
from the front door to the back that opens into the hills. If
you are really going out, you don't more than get your gloves
on as you pass along the hall.
The grand hall that runs through the old home building !
It used to be the perilous Bay Path, before the rooms were
all finished at the rear, or the floor laid quite through. After-
ward, it was the pleasant highway, beside which comfortable
doors stood open all along. We have forgotten about that,
now ; we don't know what half the rooms are like ; we go
over the whole world as we read its news, by captions. It is
just Alpha and Omega ; we start from some whence, and ai-e
expressed through to somewhere ; we get in at one depot, and
out at another that looks just like it ; as to the between,
oh, that was on the back of the railway check, or among the
much-crumpled leaves of the " Guide."
Aunt Ildy and Hope and I did not go to Bosto% so, that
day. We knew that there was to be sleight-of-hand about it,
but we kept our eyes wide open to the operation, and meant
to apprehend as much of it as we could. Brains wouldn't
stand the stretch of that determined realization of detail, on
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 243
the long modern routes. People soon learned to take to their
railway libraries, and to leave off looking out at windows.
We began, or Aunt Ildy did, by laying in such a stock of
provisions as one might take now for a seven days' journey
through to San Francisco. There was no knowing how much
of an interval there would be between the arrival of the stage
and the starting of the train from Palmer, or whether it might
not be gone before we got there. Steam was a strange, new
agent, not to be blindly trusted or calculated upon.
At any rate, we were to dine out of our basket. And a
very nice basket it was to dine out of. Travelling was like
sickness, an emergency that brought out the most sacred of
Aunt Ildy's stores ; things from the top-shelf and the inside
cupboard, set away to " keep on hand." I never quite realized
how these things ever got used up. We made them every
year and put them by ; we were hardly ever sick, and as to
journeys and exposures and needs in that sort, this was the
first I have memory of. I believe Aunt Ildy secretly gave
many a good thing to those whose emergencies came oftener.
She would not let her left hand know it, if her right hand did ;
it was not her way to own to any tenderness of s} T mpathy or
generosity ; besides, she would not have given her left hand
the precedent.
We had plum cake, made for unexpected company, and by
no means brought out when there was premeditation sufficient
for beating up something of the lighter kinds, plum-cake
rich enough for an unexpected wedding, and whose flavor
toned and mellowed with a reasonable age ; there was a little
w.:ite paper-bag of candied orange-peel, such as nobody but
Aunt Ildy knew the secret of; and there was a small bottle
of her oldest cherry brandy, since there could be " no know-
ing," either, what might happen to some of us before we got
there. Something terrible might easily have happened, if we
had been going much farther, and if we had kept on faithfully
with that basket. The cold-boiled chicken and the buttered
rolls, the rounds of pound-cake gingerbread and the slices of
new cheese, were the pieces of resistance.
244 HITHERTO :
11 It makes me feel so grand ! " said Hope Devine, her
63'es shining, and her whole face lifted up.
The puff and the rush of the first few minutes were over,
like the tug and flap of a great bird's wings as it rises, and
the train had taken its pace, the swift, skimming shoot across
the country, that made the post-and-rail fences sweep by in
blurred lines, and the green fields scud under us, and the
trees and the houses waltz around each other and out of sight,
away through the whole reach of the shifting landscape.
" It makes me proud to be one ! "
" One what? " said literal Aunt Ildy.
" One anybody," Hope answered, laughing.
She took for granted people knew what she meant. She
was apt to speak in half sentences, and it was easy for me to
understand her so. The rest was in her face.
Something kindled and flashed forth from her now, like the
soul of the force that was urging us on. The pride and the
glory and the triumph of humanity were exultant in Hope
Devine, taking her first ride in a common railroad car.
" It makes me think of the ' powers.' ' Powers and princi-
palities,' and the ' Prince of the power of the air.' There are
such great things ; and they seem so awful. And yet they
are only things."
She went on with something else, to herself, in a tone,
hushed just below the covering rumble of the wheels. She
thought she spoke in secret ; but I heard a word or two, and
I knew the rest.
" Nor life, nor death, nor principalities, nor powers, nor
things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor
any other creature "
Her heart and her face finished that also.
" It doesn't matter ; not even what's to come; how much
they find out, or what they do, among the things, does it?
It's grand, and splendid, and it grows almost frightful with
the ever-so-much of it, it crowds so ; but it isn't the way
we've got to go, and it can't hinder, nor change ; there's a short
way out of it and overhead of all. You can shut your eyes
and be there."
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 245
Absent from these things and present with Him. Hope
lived just so simply and sublimely close to Christ and his
heaven. The world could not confuse her ; the powers of the
air could not stop her short with their magnificence, their
triumph, or their terror.
To go down among the great places of the earth with her
would be like going with one of the angels.
Who knows what going or doing are like to any one, only
seeing the outside of it? We were just two country girls,
with a plain old lady and a big dinner-basket and railway
tickets on a train to Boston. A train to Boston was an old
story already. What did our newness signify?
I think we all felt grand when we steamed into the little
old. Worcester passenger-house, among a few street children,
gathered to " see the cars," some groups of people waiting to
meet friends, and a good indication of future possibilities in
the way of a hack-driver throng. We were the Western Ex-
press, "Express" sounded fine and important in those
clays, and the rails were hot behind us with our hurry.
Aunt Ildy sat up like the prow of a ship sailing in from far
seas to her moorings. Hope's eyes were full of light and
expectation, and I felt my heart beat quick as I came into
the beginning of the city that I had never seen.
It was a pleasant house that we went to, in the neighbor-
hood of Summer Street and Church Green. Great crowns
of forest-trees surged up among the chimneys, and the side-
walks were still and shady, and the houses had little gardens
in front. Children rolled their hoops, and babies' carriages
went up and down, where heavy drays and cases of merchan-
dise fill up the whole street-way now, and block the pavement
before great warehouses.
Boston was in her pleasant, young matronhood, then.
" She wore her own hair, as it were ; and had not capped it
with any foreign tawdriness, or taken to false, staring fronts.
She had not had her dear old irregular teeth out, that gave
half the home-sweetness to her smile, and replaced them with
the square, stiff, polished blocks that grin from old, care-
lined, art-finished faces.
246 HITHEKTO:
Boston was individual, and not conglomerate, as it is to-
day. There is only a little bit of the old place left, now ;
streets of charming houses without any modern improvements,
over behind Beacon Hill, and be}*ond the State House. The
South End is a piece of New York patched on, and Back Bay
has been filled up, and a section of Paris dumped down into
it.
I am glad I remember it as it was.
In this still, simple Boston, where, just behind her busy
wharves, there were places to live and to think in, there wore
many things beginning besides railroads and steamships.
We came into the midst of these, or the sound of them.
It was the time of the first flush and ferment of rational,
moral, physiological, philanthropic, transcendental, aesthetical
philosophy. Miss Sedgwick had written " Home," and tho
"Rich Poor Man," and "Means and Ends;" "Combe's
Physiology " was being desperately studied in young ladies'
schools. There was unlimited and unmitigated cold bathing ;
and calisthenics were coming into vogue. Theodore Parker
was preaching ; Emerson was thinking great thoughts aloud
to a wondering world ; Brownson had come out with " New
Views ; " Margaret Fuller was expanding the rare, strange
blossom of her womanhood ; and girls of seventeen were read-
ing Carlyle. "The True, the Good, and the Beautiful,"
bound into a watchword, were rampant on men's lips. A
grand watch-word ; so is " Liberty, Fraternity, Equality ; "
the thing is to rise to the real height of it ; to reach by it to
the more, not to pervert it to an excuse for dropping to the
less, or the worse.
Coming to stay with Mrs. Holgate, Aunt Ildy and Hope
Devine and I three diverse and unaccustomed souls
entered into the midst or the edge of the midst of all this.
The Holgates had gone to a lecture when we arrived.
The " family-reliance," Liefie, or Relief, got tea for us, and
made us comfortable. People had family-reliances in that old
time, which gave them leisure to run after the new ideas.
Now, they have been running after them so long that familj'-
reHances have ceased to lie educated, and the stock has run
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 247
out. There is danger that we may have to begin anew this
circle of humanity, and not come round to the " true, the good,
and the beautiful" again, in the abstract, for a few genera-
tions of women more. ,
Mr. Holgate had been at one .time concerned in a booksell-
ing and publishing firm. Mrs. Holgate was a distant con-
nection of the Chisms. The business and the cousinhood
together had kept up a sort of pre-railwayite intimacy ; safe
standing invitations were exchanged ; " when you come to
town," or " if you get out our way," which seldom happened.
Yet now and then Uncle Royle spent a night at the Holgates',
when the transactions of trade took him to Boston, or he went
there to dinner, or for a Sunday, now and then, during his
service in the legislature ; and Mrs. Holgate and the girls had
once been to New Oxford.
Mrs. Holgate was a woman whom I should shortly describe
as having begun aesthetics rather late in life. They sat some-
how curiously on the substratum of homely habit and unintro-
speclive common sense. She had a way of snatching up her
raptures, as if she had all at once remembered them ; or of
making a supererogatory use of them, as of a new mental
elegance or contrivance, that she had done without all her
life, but which it was the right and proper thing to find
essential and inevitable now.
She was stout, and looked externally what people call
" settled down." Very much so, indeed ; and as if the settling
had taken place a long time ago, and could not easily be dis-
turbed ; as if you would hardly expect new modes of thought
or action from her, or a new expression in her face, any more
than new ways of doing up her hair, which women past forty
were not apt to aflect in those days.
I noticed all this of her in five minutes after she had come
in with her daughters, a good deal heated with her summer-
evening walk, and looking as if dogdays and metaphj'sics
together were considerably too much for her.
Boston, as I said, was still green with gardens then ; and
there were hushes of home quiet in cool, watered streets and
uuprofaned " Places," where vines covered the house-fronts
248 HITHERTO :
and caged birds sang in the windows, that almost feigned a
feeling of the country and the woods ; and people were con-
tent to abide there, for the most part, even amid the August
heats.
The two young ladies were bright-looking, handsome girls,
with hair tucked plain behind their ears, and prompt, straight-
forward manners, and a very Boston-y air of determined
sense and intellectuality. A process-of-culture expression
pervaded themselves and the house. A little anticipative it
was, also, claiming result by faith and purpose. As for in-
stance, a reading-stand in a window, which we afterward found
to be the younger sister's particular corner, held a large
German dictionary open upon it, and a volume of " Schiller"
in the original rested beside. We noticed subsequently that her
actual studies were as yet limited to the rudiments of the
language, but she set what was to be before herself and
others with a truly apostolic pressing forward to the things
before.
In her children's babyhood, Mrs. Holgate had been simply
a little romantic, in an old-fashion of romance ; and had named
her daughters respectively, Harriet Byron and Corinna. At
the present time she especially felicitated herself upon this
second baptismal choice, which I think she had probably
rather hit upon originally for its prettiness, than through any
enthusiastic and appreciative intimacy with Madame de
Stae'l. Corinna herself evidently blessed her fate in this re-
spect, and tried to live faithfully up to her christening, as
Harriet did to her nose, which was rarely and delicately
classic. Corinna undertook severe literature, and deep re-
search ; Harriet devoted herself more to the beautiful in art
and poetry.
They had been this evening to a conversational class ; after
Margaret Fuller ; subject, " the mythology of the Greeks."
To unravel an old myth, to find the why of it, the
abstract principle, this was just now what interested and
excited above all, and rewarded with its highest delight the
mental enterprise of a certain portion of the young, progres-
sive intellect of the city of progress.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 249
It was all exceedingly well ; place and time according and
proportionate ; but there was a New England excess in it all.
Eveiybody must needs do the same style of thinking ; and
they must be at it all the time. Because great minds were
comparing the old and the new, finding the lights that fall
from different and far-off points in all the ages, sifting truths,
and giving grand abstractions to the world, all they who
listened, and who were fired by the watchwords, Progress !
Culture ! must dip into the selfsame abstractions ; must find a
myth in everything, and begin all their sentences with adverbs.
They were like children rolling their forlorn and much-
manipulated bits of dough from the maternal pie-boards, till,
seeing it, one got sick of the pies beforehand, and mistrusted
the whole baking.
There were circles and circles ; as there are in everything.
There were those who were, and those who only ambitioned
to be ; those who rode their chariots of thought for the sake
of the whither they might bear them, and they who liked the
equipage and its blazonry, and the stepping in and out before
the eyes of the multitude.
There were restless spirits also, to whom the old was taste-
less and lifeless ; who seized eagerly these roundabout fashions
of coming back to what they had and knew already through
fresh and toilsome reasonings ; taking back and forth from
each other's fingers the threads of truth in a perpetual cat's-
cradle of fancied discovery and invention ; crying out to each
other without ceasing, Behold, now, that is truly something
new ; that, indeed, is wonderful !
It was a fever that had its day ; that rages yet, as fever
always does, in its breeding haunts, whence it bursts forth now
and then as epidemic.
The Holgates had taken it badly ; we came, as it were,
into the midst of an infection. Aunt Ildy looked about her,
at first, in pure mystification ; then she began to behave as if
she thought they had got a plague ; and to go round with
her nostrils metaphorically stuffed, and to do her duty vigor-
ously, by scattering, from time to time, some pungent, if not
ill-savoring antiseptics.
250 HITHERTO :
It was certainly a change for me, and a break upon the old,
wearing lines of thought ; but it was not precisely what Aunt
Ildy had meant and looked for.
It stirred in me some of my own old wonderings and spec-
ulations ; I could not help entering into it enough to find out
a little of what it was ; sometimes I got light, and sometimes
I grew confused.
But I was stayed on the right and left, by Aunt Ildy's un-
compromising orthodoxy and sarcastic practicality ; by Hope
Devine's strange, straight vision, right through all mysticism
and bewilderment, to what truly was.
I do not believe that in all the community, so touched with
strange fire, there was such a curious conjunction of elements,
to test and neutralize each, other and evolve some safe result
of life to a true longing for the living reality, as was met here
in Mrs. Holgate's house.
I remember bits of conversation, that sprang up now and
then, over a breakfast or a tea, after a chapter of some
new book, or a surprising modern aphorism, or a fresh " Orphic
saying ; " or in our rooms at night, between Hope and me, and
sometimes with Aunt Ildy, also, when we asked each other
how it all seemed, and what we supposed would be the upshot
and the outcome of it all.
I remember little momentary situations, and the look of
everybody, stamped like a picture upon my imagination by
the force of some sudden peculiarity of act or word.
I shall never forget how funnily Corinua Holgate startled us
one day, as we all sat in the back parlor with our different
morning work, she in her window with portfolio on lap, and
various sheets of scribbled paper lying about her, on which
she was making up some abstract of a " conversational," or
sketching some outline of ideas preparatory to one that was
to be.
Still on the Grecian myths ; still puzzling for clever solu-
tions and brilliant suggestions ; trying to recollect clearly
what had been propounded and explained last time, or put
forth in questions to be answered next.
" Why" she demanded electrically, like a thunder-clap out
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 25t
of a far-off cloud of philosophic abstraction, across the un-
thinking and unexpectant summer silence of our common-
place, ''why was Venus fabled to have arisen from the foam
of the sea?"
" Because you must be clean before you can be beautiful ! "
shot back Aunt Ildy, quick as a flash, an irony of common
sense out of a swift, frowning cloud of contempt.
Hope and I laughed. Harriet and Mrs. Holgate, slow to
receive and discern, looked up as if they did not quite know
whether it were meant as Orphic or not ; but Corinna, after a
second's breathlessness, jumped to her feet, let fall her papers
in a Sibylline shower, rushed to Miss Chism, and, dropping on
a cricket at her feet, accepted her and her word as an advent
and an inspiration.
" Why, that's grand ! " she cried. " That's a real thought !
That's insight ! I've found a soul ! "
" Better keep quiet about your luck, then," said Miss Chism,
drawing away her knitting-yarn from under Corinna's elbow,
and shifting slightly her position away from the heroics. " A
chicken doesn't peep when it's really got its mouth full ! "
Corinna did not care a bit for her snubbing. It was only a
spur.
"Why won't you own up? You do think, Miss Chism.
What do you deny yourself for?" And then she quoted
Emerson ; about " our own rejected thought returning to us
with a kind of offended majesty, from the lips of others."
It was sufficiently ridiculous ; and I believed, myself, that
Corinna was half funny and dexterous in defence, as a bright
girl might be, and half in earnest, determined to win Aunt
Ildy over.
" Whatever I think, I choose to think, and be done with it ;
I wasn't made to chew a cud or to count my breaths, to see
how many I take in a day."
" Miss Ildy ! You're epigrammatic ! You don't know how
clever you are ! "
"There let me alone! Don't snarl my yarn! I don't
believe you know how big a fool you are, or will be if you go
on!"
252 HITHERTO:
" I mean to go on till I have found out, and that's the height
and 'extreme small apex of human knowledge. See how
you've snarled my yarn ! "
And she went back and began to gather up her scattered
papers.
Aunt Ildy liked the girls, their fresh, modern brightness,
and their prettiness ; especially Comma's good-humored dar-
ing, so different from what she had hitherto encountered ; if
it had not been for these things, and Mrs. Holgate's genuine,
old-fashioned, glad-to-see-you hospitality, which all her tran-
scendentalism could not alter or affect, she would have gone
home.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 253
CHAPTER XIX.
SARTOR RESARTUS.
"Ix's the queerness of it," said Hope. " They're at such
great trouble to do things over again. It is just as if people
should go to contriving shoes, or how to make wheat into
bread, when they have been fed and shod all their lives long.
"Why can't they take what there is in the world ? "
" There are thoughts to-day that haven't been always," said
Corinna.
" New receipts," said Aunt Ildy.
" There's growth, you know," said Mrs. Holgate, " growth,
and evolution ; evolution" she repeated, as if she had groped
against that landmark in the dark, and so laid fast hold of it
with both hands, valiantly. "Who was it said it, Corinna,
' Everything becomes ; act and being blossom ' ? That was
beautiful."
" Not altogether new though. Carlyle says it. ' Cast forth
thy Act, thy Word, into the ever-living, ever- working Universe ;
it is a seed-grain that cannot die ; unnoticed to-day, it will be
found nourishing as a Banyan grove, perhaps, alas ! as a
hemlock forest, after a thousand years.' "
"It is older than that," said Hope, quietly, not a whit over-
awed by hearing Carlyle quoted for the first time.
" ' The kingdom of heaven is like unto a grain of mustard-
seed.' I think it was all said, all that we ever come to;
and that, after all our wondering and puzzling and hard work, we
go back and find it there. We invent the bread, and there's
the loaf in the closet."
" But it has to be so, always," said Corinna, eagerly.
" Emerson says, ' No one can find in history what he has not
254 HITHERTO:
first found in himself.' Nor in revelation any more, I sup-
pose."
" That was all told us too, at the beginning. ' We speak
that we do know, and testify that we have seen, and ye receive
not our witness.' ' If I have told you earthly things and ye
believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly
things ? ' How can they think they say these things for the
first time?"
" Anyway, it comes back to the same. We must grow to
it."
" And we cannot of ourselves add one cubit to our stature.
Growing is living."
" Yes, answered Corinna, quoting Emerson again. " ' What
truth you have, live it, and so have more.' "
" ' To him that hath, shall be given and he shall have abun-
dance ; ' ' Do the will, and ye shall know of the doctrine ; ' and
besides that/' went on Hope, warming into self-forgetful-
ness, and that bright-shining coming into her eyes; the
same word says, ' I that am the Truth, am the Life. No man
cometh unto the Father, but by me.' Growing is living ; and
living is given. ' Keep the commandments, and I will mani-
fest myself I do believe it is all there and a great deal
more. I do not think I am afraid to say that I feel as if I
could get along without Emerson."
" I dare say he would tell you so himself. That it was just
what you must do."
" I dare say he would. And there is where he stops with
his new word, just where I want help. The other says,
' Come unto me ; abide with me, and I will give you everlast-
ing life.' "
Hope's voice had lowered. Her cheek was crimson with
the intensity of her impulse. There was a softer shining in
her eyes now, the shining up to the golden light of the
pure spring of her tears ; they only shone, not fell ; she said
no more, but presently putting together some little things of
ours that were to go upstairs, she took them in her hands and
went away.
" She's a good girl," said Aunt Ildy ; " there's a Dealing
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 255
|
with her, I don't doubt. All aint brought in the same way,
nor don't have the same evidences."
That was the end of it for then ; the extremes touched ;
that which was all charged and quick with thrills and sparkles
was neutralized into dead tranquillity.
We were going out that morning. We all went, present^,
and put on our things. Corinna had a German lesson, and
Harriet wanted to buy crayons ; Mrs. Holgate had people to
see, and black silk to match for new sleeves to her second-
best gown ; and Aunt Hdy and Hope and I had the inevitable
shopping of country visitors to town.
It 'was the dear, old, mixed-up Washington Street, then,
where everything was small and wedged together, and you
knew your way by the angles and corners, and nothing stared
out at you through great plate glass, but you must know
enough to begin with to go in and inquire.
Up on Trernont Row they had some new stores, and the
first great, showy dry-goods warehouse was just finished
between Franklin and Summer Streets ; but people shook
their heads at it as at something more than doubtfully flashy
and fast, and old ladies got bewildered in being battledored
from counter to counter under the new department system,
and bobbed little courtesies, and dodged right and left to let
the other bobbing and courtesying old ladies pass, when they
came up against their own images in the great mirrors at the
back.
Old Mrs. Gregory hadn't done selling caps and ribbons and
laces in her mysterious bonnet, nor had Mrs. Peverelly's sign
been taken down from the confectionery in. the "jog." It is
of no use to tell people in general how we bought shoes at
Williams's, and carpets at Gulliver's, and threads and needles
and Berlin wools in the narrow two stories at Whitney's, and
things unattainable elsewhere, at Quincy Tufts'. Boston peo-
ple, who have lived long enough, remember ; and nobody else
understands or cares ; but there was something cosey and self-
gratulatory in the shopping of those days, when one found out _
things and places, and there was a cleverness in doing it ;
when a buying was a particular and personal having, because
256 HITHERTO:
|
there were not inexhaustible cases and cargoes of everything
to supply a thousand people just alike, and dress and trim them
all in uniform, from their hair down.
Hope liked it ; it called out her Monday-and-Saturday fac-
ulty ; she could organize the whole expedition in her head
beforehand ; when she was with us we seldom had to retrace
or double upon our steps ; she put us in mind of all we wanted,
just when we were where we could do the errands ; eveiy-
thing fell out, and fell in, beautifully ; it was a kind of blos-
soming of business ; and Aunt Ildy was in her serenest good-
humor with us all.
It was wonderful how much Hope saw in the streets ; how,
brushing against a stranger, she somehow touched not an
elbow, but a human life. She had no n'eed to look away back
to the old Greeks, this golden-eyed girl, to read deep words
and truths of love and beauty ; they were nigh to her, about
her daily path, offering their gracious text at every hand.
Quickened to notice and compare, by all I saw of the new
life the strain after life at the Holgates', I recognized
this more than ever.
I think, remembering at this after time, that rarely, if ever,
was a day passed, or an outgoing made, however simply, in
Hope's company, that the time and the going were not crowned
and fulfilled, by some happening or perception, some meaning
and interest, that were like the harvest of the hour.
We had just got a new cap for Aunt Hdy, and were turning
down toward Widdifield's, about her glasses, which was our
last business, when before us on the pavement a group of three
passed by.
A lady in silk and lace ; a child, a little girl, with
dainty bonnet and delicate kid gloves, and bits of French
boots, such as then replaced only occasionally the simple
walking-shoes still worn ; behind them, keeping eagerly close,
almost touching them, yet carefully preserving such angle of
position that her following should not be obvious to the lady ;
(there were sides to bonnets then ; I wonder if they have been
left off since on the same principle that horses' blinders have,
that we needn't shy at anything?) .now and then venturing
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 257
a finger, softly, upon the muslin folds of the little one's rose-
colored dress ; she herself, this last, in an old, limp, faded
calico, wearing down-trodden shoes and much-bedinged stock-
ings ; a sun-scorched bonnet, tied under the chin with ribbon
that had ceased to be anything but string ; bare hands, and
hair filling up untidily the bent bonnet-brim, and hanging
below the crumpled cape ; turning her toes out, and falling, it
seemed unconsciously, into a step and air the parody of that
before her ; wearing, all the while, a kind of happy dream-look
in the eyes, and a smile under the shadow of the shabby straw,
that told of some absorption and some satisfying beyond and
against the accounting for of appearance.
Hope and I were together ; Aunt Ildy walked a little behind ;
Hope was close to the common, shabby, yet not ragged or suf-
fering-looking child ; something lightened in her face answer-
ing to the look in the girl's ; it was as if the two were speaking
a secret language.
All at once, the mother, holding her daughter's hand,
stopped before a window in which hung delicate French prints
and lawns. There was one with small purple shamrocks on a
white ground ; the little clustered trefoils, with their crossed
stems, dropped all over it in a violet shower.
" There, that would do for you, Susie, dear ! " And by her
sudden stop, and the passing of the contrary current on the
narrow walk, we were all held in an instant's pause.
Aunt Ildy, rather indignant, pressed by, and 'moved on
first ; Hope caught my hand, and lingered. Amongst us, the
calico gown and the rusty bonnet were nearly hidden for the
second or two, and in these we heard a little voice, thinking
itself covered up and hidden also, that said, softly, as the two
passed into the shop :
" So it will. For Susie, dear, and me, dear. Just alike.
I'll stand outside and look at the folks, ma."
And the little untidy thing stood up on the doorstep, and
let us go by.
"Just think of that!" cried Hope. "Don't you see?
She's making believe it's her mother, and that she's another,
and belongs to them. I know ! "
17
258 HITHERTO:
"Poor thing! What's the use?" said I, only pitying the
delusion. .
" Use ! " exclaimed Hope. " It's true somewhere.
There's a mother-love for her somewhere and a giving
just as much. There's an inside world ! This only stands
for it. And that lady, and most folks, for a little more
than they know of, that's all."
When we got home, Mrs. Holgate asked us if we had been
in at the Athenaeum again.
" We didn't have time," said Hope.
"You did all j'our shopping, I suppose?" Corinna asked,
a little satirically.
" All for to-day. Yes."
" I waited for you there, awhile," said Harriet. " I've been
nearly all the morning among those casts of the antiques."
" I like the pictured best," said Hope.
Hope was a little bit shocked at standing face to face with
the Venuses, and had been half afraid, I think, of the Laocoon.
" You don't understand the antiques," said Mrs. Holgate,
forbearingly.
'i I don't think I do, ma'am," answered Hope, simply. " At
least, I understand some other things easier."
They did keep at it all the time. First one thing and
then another : Ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics. What this
said, that preached, and the other wrote. Everybody had a
tug at the Sphinx. Life was well-nigh ciphered with their
deciphering ; reduced to hopeless shreds with their anatomiz-
ing. Aunt Ildy quoted " Mother Goose " :
" The sow came in with the saddle,
The little pig rocked the cradle ;
The dish jumped up on the table
To see the pot swallow the ladle ;
The spit that stood behind the door
Threw the pudding-stick on the floor.
Oddsplut ! said the gridiron. Can't you agree ?
I'm the head Constable. Bring 'em to me ! "
But where was the head constable? Where was (Edipus?
A STOliY OF YESTERDAYS. 259
I, with a disquiet in my own experience that answered to
this outward surging, looked on ; watching if any help might
come of it to me.
Two days later there was an afternoon reading at the
house. Aunt Ildy went upstairs and took a nap. Hope and
I got into a corner.
Everybody looked very wise and strong. It was the look
beforehand, like the Schiller on the reading-stand. They
seemed so certain of what they were coming to ; at least, that
they were surely coming to something.
I, doubting so painfully what I was coming to, or if to
anything, questioning so of life, that with me had got into
a hard knot at the very outset of the unwinding, questioned
also of all that came in my way ; if haply any sign might
direct me right ^ if I might catch any loop of hope or clear-
ness, through which my thread might run smooth again into
my hand.
I wondered if they brought any word of fate to me, these
seekers ; these repeaters after greater seekers ; these passers-
on of telegraphic meanings and solemn watchwords.
I was half vexed with Hope, quietly busy with her netting
of a cake-napkin for Aunt Ildy, apparently untouched with
any momentousness or expectation ; forgetful that " such
drawing-room was simply a section of infinite space, where so
many God-created souls did for the time meet together."
Clothed she was, comfortably ; in her contented every-day
life ; in the simple outward that was given her ; in no haste to
strip her being down to the mysterious, naked Me of the meta-
physics. Clothed, and in her right mind, I wonder, as God
meant her to be ? Not denuded, cutting herself with stones,
driven by the legion?
I thought of this afterward ; I think of it now, when I can
look back and remember how the Lord held her, then and
always, safely and tenderly, at his feet.
I had got hold of " Sartor Kesartus " since I had been here ;
its strong, bold sentences had taken a grasp of me ; I thought
I found there things I had not known before.
What signified the shifting relations of neighbor atoms if
260 HITHERTO:
we were indeed but atoms in the All ? Could I be content
with that? Could I be a part of the great shining, the
universal joy? Was this self-losing? The divine end ?
Out of some individual restlessness must always come this
grasping forth into the vague, this flinging back of life into
the impersonal. I think I know better now ; that " we would
not be unclothed, but clothed upon," when most " in this
tabernacle we do groan, being burdened ; " that each living-
out of God's meaning is a piece of his own beauty, and a per-
sonal blessedness, laid up for each from the beginning ; that
so only we give back into his glory ; that it was so Jesus
gave his flesh, his mortal living and embodiment, for the
life of the world. That we must wear the raiment he puts
upon us, with simple believing, till he changes it for the white
robe of an eternal purity and peace.
To-day I was eager, feverish ; P laid a mental clutch upon
every word ; I wanted all at once .to come into my inherit-
ance. There are other prodigals than they who demand
their patrimony to squander in riotous outward living.
They brought in treasures like the Forty Thieves ; each had
found something rich or sparkling ; there was much reading,
much talking over what was read ; much rejoicing over great
words, Sesames of absolute truth ; after all, they went away,
leaving me confused and hungry, like one who wakes from a
dream of sumptuous food.
I carried the " Tailor Sewed Over " upstairs with me that
night. I wanted to make Hope talk about it.
I sat reading while she brushed her long, bright hair. I
had just let mine down, and left it so. It was different from
hers, as the working of the brain beneath it ; capable of
catching a gleam in the quick light, but in the shadow dusky,
neutral, dun-colored. Hers shone from itself. I pushed my
hands up among the fallen locks against my temples, and
leaned so over the book.
" It's just what you say yourself," I broke out, presently,
to Hope, without preface, and without lifting my eyes.
I spoke as if she had disputed something. I felt in rny
mind, magnetically, the feeling of hers ; that she was wistful
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 261
of my occupation, wistful also of a better^ fuller help for
me. I knew she understood, with her strange intuition,
having hardly looked into any philosophy, that no philoso-
phy would answer me.
I read from the page before me :
" ' All visible things are emblems. Matter exists only
spiritually, to represent some Idea, and body it forth.'
You're always saying it, Hope. You say ' It's all true, some-
how ; everything means something ; you can't see what there
isn't ; there's an inside world.' Why don't you like this ? "
" I don't know it much ; but it seems to stop" said Hope.
" It's the difference between a word in a dictionary, or a sen-
tence in a grammar, and a word spoken by somebody right to
me. It may be a very beautiful word ; the sentence may have
the parts of speech all right, ready for parsing ; but it's spell-
ing and parsing, after all ; what the words were really meant
for was to speak with. I want to be spoken to; and so do you,
Anstiss. I think they are so busy parsing, that they forget
to listen. Their bright thinking makes me feel cold," she
went on after a pause, " and the hard work of it tires me. It
is like the fishermen toiling all night and catching nothing,
till the Lord came, in the morning, and told them where to
cast their nets, and gave them what they wanted. I have to
come back to this, to get warmed and rested, always."
And Hope sat down in the chair opposite mine, and took
into her hands her Bible from the little book-table.
" Wait a minute," she began again, as I turned back to my
Caiiyle. " See how live this is, after that. And if it hadn't
been for this, is it likely, I wonder, that that man would ever
have got at the other ? "
So she read the beginning of the Gospel according to St.
John. Those wonderful eighteen verses that are the spiritual
epic of creation and redemption.
" God spoke from the beginning ; and his speech was Him-
self. All things are his words and his meanings, and without
them was not anything made. In this word of love are the
life and the light of men ; but it shone in darkness that un-
derstood it not. There were men sent to bear witness. John
262 HITHERTO :
came. He was not that Light ; he was not all God had to
say ; no man is ; he only saw, and interpreted. The true
Light lighteth eveiy man. Each may have a little ; may be a
letter of the word. Yet the world knew it not. Even his
own received him not, knowing it to be He. Therefore came
the Word, at last, once for all, in the flesh ; this whole
thought of God in and for his world, that was Himself, in a
human life, and dwelt among us ; it touched us with grace and
truth ; it translated to us the hidden glory of the Father. No
man hath seen God at any time ; this only begotten, which is
in his own bosom, hath declared him."
That was the fresh, live meaning that ran through the old,
worn words, as she read them over ; something of that she
made me feel, then, in her feeling of them. It was in her voice,
her emphasis, her pauses. The soul of the sublime language
was in her eyes, and lightened upon me. But I felt as if I
could not have got it for myself.
" Somebody must always help me, Hope," I said ; " you or
Emerson, or Carlyle. I must get it where I can."
I thought, as I spoke, of Red Hill, and the interpretation I
had waited years for, and that Grandon Cope had given me.
Of how he quickened me with his own insight, till I, too,
could see ; till I could, also, count the stones in the wall of
the New Jerusalem. I had been near beholding the glory,
and living in the light of it. I had told Richard, then, as if I
knew, how all creation was a " talk." I had been impatient
with him because he did not see what I thought I saw. It
came back to me now, with a meaning that I had not known
myself.
Since, and such a little since, the cloud of my life had
shut in the shining ; my mistakes had bewildered me, and sent
me astray ; I could not distinguish the voices ; pain and re-
proach assailed me ; there was only a cry in my own heart ;
the world about me had grown dumb again.
" I don't believe it comes with much looking for, or with
telling back and forth, as some of these people seem to think.
It isn't ' with observation.' The Lord himself gives it,
* within us.' "
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 263
Up and down the page of the book I held, my eye still ran,
mechanically ; and still the words read like great words ; why
were they not worth while ? Who knew that they might not
have been " given" also?
" I do not say," said Hope, to my demand of this. " It
only seems to me as if they climbed up their own way into
the sheepfold, when all the time the Door is open. As if
they tried to begin again, and do it themselves. And that is
the losing and the hard work."
" See here," I said, hardly noticing her word. " ' If you
consider it, what is Man himself, and his whole terrestrial
life, but an Emblem ; a clothing, or visible Garment for that
divine Me of his, cast hither, like a light-particle, down from
heaven ? " ;
" Still it is only like parsing. Can he tell us what to do
with the Me, when we have found that it is there ? Or what
shall ever become of it? It is the Me that puzzles us."
" Has anybody iw-puzzled us ? "
" Certain, Anstiss." Tender, and reverent, hurt gently
with my assumed doubt, was Hope's utterance of this peculiar
word of hers. " ' The life is more than meat, and the body is
more than raiment.' He did not leave us to wait for Mr. Car-
lyle to say that. But we must wait for Him to say, ' Yet
the very hairs of your head are all numbered.' ' Consider the
ravens ; consider the lilies ; how God clothes and feeds them
and you. Ye are not able to do the thing that is least ;
why are ye troubled about the rest ? Fear not, little flock ; it
is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom ! ' '
Curly le's " All " was not like this. Nor the clothing of his
light-particles. Still, neither is chemistry the law of love ;
yet these things are analogous ; they help. They had a
charm for me, they illustrated ineffable things. I remembered
the old thrill of my school-days, when I learned of the inter-
pretation of the gases, and straightway saw its spiritual
meaning.
Hope rested me ; reminded and reassured me ; yet I could
not see why she could not welcome these things also. They
264 HITHERTO:
were so like herself in much ; they put in grander words so
many things that she said simply.
I know, now, the difference ; the difference that made her
shrink. Out of her simple faith her receiving the king-
dom of heaven as a little child grew her living thought,
the gift of the loving Spirit ; she was afraid of cold thinking
that should try to replace faith. She was afraid of anything
that seemed to " find itself out ; " that could not see how it
was " all there, beforehand," in the perfect word that teaches
all things and saves to the uttermost.
By and by, this " all and more " that she kept bringing
from the heavenly treasure, laying it in a reverent exultation
beside whatever riches of human philosophy were offered her,
should come back to me with something of her own glad sat-
isfying ; by and by, long after, when I needed it most ; but
now I was eager to prove to her ; to make her acknowledge.
" He brings it round to just where you do ! " I cried. " He
says your very words. He proves it out of materialism it-
self. ' What make you of } 7 our Nothing can act but where it
is ? ' It is about Red and Blue, Judge and Criminal. See !
' Red says to Blue, Be hanged and anatomized. Blue hears
with a shudder, and , O wonder of wonders ! marches sorrow-
fully to the gallows, is there noosed up, and the surgeons dis-
sect him. How is this, or what make you of your Nothing
can act but where it is ? Red has no physical hold of Blue ;
no clutch of him ; neither are those ministering sheriffs and
hangmen and tipstaves so related to commanding Red that he
can tug them hither and thither ; but each stands distinct
within his own skin. Nevertheless, as it is spoken, so it is
done. Thinking reader, the reason seems to me twofold :
First, Man is a Spirit, and bound by invisible cords to all
men.'"
" Why ! Why ! " cried Hope, in a kind of breathless ful-
ness ; her face all alive with something that was almost fun,
only that her eyes glowed so with her intense enthusiasm,
" what a while he was in coming to it ! The centurion could
have helped him long ago ! ' I say to this man, Go, and lie
goeth ; and to another, Come, and he cometu ; and to my
A STOUT Of YESTERDAYS. 265
servant, Do this, and he doeth it. Speak the word, Lord,
and my servant shall be healed ! ' They cannot go outside
what has been given ; it holds the whole. The Lord's life put
it all into the world. The kingdom came; and the kings of
the earth ma}- ' bring their glory and honor into it ; ' but that
is all that they can do. The same things come here and
there ; that shows how He has made us all one ; but they are
His; He 'gave his flesh ' his bodily living of all truth
for this life of the world that is in it now. He said the flesh
was nothing ; the word he spoke was the Spirit and the life.
Why can't they see how it was all in Him ? They part his
raiment, while they crucify him ! "Who else says live things,
and then tells us, Come unto me, and I will give you more,
all. I am the bread of life that came down from heaven ? "
Hope burned and quickened as she went on ; she spoke the
thought as it came to her ; it grew as she spoke it ; it led her
whither she had not even seen when she began ; into a great,
new gladness. Every clause was an outburst of joy.
She would not have spoken so downstairs, to all those
people ; and yet, I don't know ; if it had come to her
then, perhaps she could not even then have helped it.
It seemed to me, sometimes, that Hope Devine was in-
spired.
After that, we quieted down, and went to bed.
The candle was out ; Hope lay utterly still ; her sweet
breath came softly against my cheek with such gentle and reg-
ular impulse,, that I thought she had already fallen asleep.
When, all at once, out of her repose, she spoke once more,
the issue of her musing that had still gone on, after our last
words.
"'Nothing can act but where it is.' It's true turned
round. Nothing can but be where it acts. It's there,
too, with all the rest. It's true when we dream, and
when we think, and when we pray. The angel of the Lord
came with his messages. We say ' Our Father who art
in heaven,' because when we shut our eyes, we're there.
The Lord could not love his disciples without being
' with them always.' And -that's why the little children's
266 HITHERTO:
angels oh, how beautiful it is, Anstiss, and how much there
is of it!"
" You speak so quick and so sure, Hope ! And how it all
flies together in your mind, from Genesis to Revelation ! Did
you ever think it all out before ? "
"No," said Hope, instantly ; " not so. I've just noticed
it ; " and while she hesitated, and then fixed on her quaint*,
accustomed word, I knew in the darkness how she smiled, and
what the look of vision was upon her face. "But it's true.
It's there. I see it clear."
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 267
CHAPTER XX.
AESTHETIC TEA.
" VERLOREN ! verloren ! "cried Harriet Holgate, coming in,
and subsiding into the only chair in the place.
We were busy in the pantry, or china closet, a small square
room adjoining the back parlor, in one corner of which a table
was spread with exquisite fresh linen and silver tea-things.
Corinna was standing on a high stool, reaching down best
cups and saucers, and plates of India porcelain from an upper
shelf; Hope and I, with fine glass-towels, were receiving and
dusting.
"What's lost?" answered Corinna, impatiently. "Your
gloves, or your heart, or your wits besides your time ? And
why don't you speak English ? "
" Because I'm cultivating German, and it's my duty to im-
press it on my mind by using it on all impressive occasions.
Don't be cross, Krin ; at least till I say Now ! I haven't got
through. When I have, we'll all be cross together."
" Are we to wait for you to get it all into German ? "
" No, indeed. It would be too full of idiots. You'd better
come down, before I fire."
" Fire away," retorted Krin, not a bit aesthetically, or ap-
prehensively ; and drawing a pile of precious porcelain into
her hands at their utmost reach, as if in defiance.
" Well, then, the big man isn't coming. That's one verlo-
ren. And the other is, it's more than half of no use if he
did. He's engaged to be married ; up there in the country.
The Growe girls' have just told me. Now ! "
Corinua gave me the plates, cautiously, and then dropped
deliberately and gradually down, and sat upon the stooL
"Well that's nice!"
268 HITHERTO:
She put her feet upon a rung, and her elbows on her
knees, and her chin into her hands ; and looked down at us
with her cheeks wrinkled up under her eyes.
" Why can't he come? The rest of it's rubbish, you know.
After to-night, who cares ? But what is he spoiling our tea
for?"
" Don't know. The Upfolds counted on his staying, for our
tea, and for the class to-morrow. But he's gone ; and
what's the transcendental for an upset apple cart, or fat in
the fire?"
Harriet looked so pretty, and so funny, and spoke in such
sudden small type, that the words failed of their vulgarity.
"On the whole, I believe I'm rather afraid of him," said
Corinna, with resignation. " He'd have found out everything
one isn't up to yet."
" On the whole, the grapes are sour," respomded Harriet.
" Girls, girls ! What are you sitting round douig nothing
for? What's the matter? Isn't that china dusted yet ?"
"Mother!" cried Corinna, "what do you think? The
Upfolds' friend that Mr. Cope, the " North American
Review" man isn't coming. He's gone."
The last plate, that I was just placing on the pile, did not
drop, as things do in story-books, when people are taken by
surprise. On the contrary, my fingers contracted themselves
so tightly upon it, that they might almost have pinched a
piece out.
It had been so near as this ! What should I have done ?
I just stood there, holding the plate.
" I haven't had time to read his piece," said Mrs. Holgate,
with an echo of her daughter's submission. The girls could
not break her of all her old-fashioned words. She never re-
membered to say " article."
"But, there ! I can't let my cake burn if he isn't. I came
for a straw from that new broom. Pull me one out, Harriet.
A couple."
" Mother doesn't care two straws," said Harriet, indolently,
handing them across.
" Straws show which way the wind blows. Right through
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 269
the cooking range, to-day. No draught anywhere else," said
Corinna, laughing.
*' Cake is cake," said Mrs. Holgate.
" I don't believe it is," said Hope, merrily. " I guess it's
only an Idea, suggested by particles of sugar and starch
and sulphur, and the rest of the egg and butter chemicals."
Mrs. Holgate took the straws, and hurried away with them,
downstairs.
She was suffering a lamentable relapse into housewifery and
commonplace. All her pre-Carlylean instincts were aroused
in her by the demand upon her purely practical skill, which
was also her natural delight. She and Aunt Tidy were
kitchened together all the forenoon, over wonderful prepara-
tions of muffins and lemon pound-cake. They only had two
things, at these teas, beside the tea ; but those two things,
here, were to be things in their way such as High Culture had
never elsewhere put her lips to.
.The gods do not despise ambrosia ; only, they eat it in a
divine abstraction.
I remember, amid all the other remembrances of that
evening, how fast the tender muffins ceased to be, and how
the melting richness of the lemon cake was dissolved away.
I have no recollection of how that plate ever got out of my,
hand. I think Hope must have taken it. She always did,
quietly, what other people had not the sense to do for them-
selves.
When the dinner was over, and the last touches were given
to the rooms below, we went upstairs to rest a while, and then
to dress. Aunt lid} 7 was to have .her usual nap. Hope and
I took books, and lay down on bed and sofa, in our room.
Now and then we spoke, but did not sleep.
I was thinking of those things downstairs. How much was
true and how much was put on ?
We do not live in fairy-laud, to be sure ; things will not do
themselves ; life doesn't literally flower, nor being blossom ;
there are processes.
It takes all day if you are going to have a tea, as the Hoi-
270 HITHERTO:
gates had it ; somebody's all day ; your servants', if you are
rich enough ; otherwise, your own.
When the time comes, then it all blooms ; then friends come
graciously and easily in, upon your grace and ease, and your
life is at its perfect and harmonious point ; the aspect stands
for what alwa} r s is ; the tone of the moment for that which
runs through the days.
Nobody knows about the broom-straws, when the golden-
delicate cake comes round ; nobody thinks of the special china
dusting ; nobody asks any more, if that page has been really
just now read, at which Jean Paul, replacing Schiller, lies
open on the reading-stand, pushed carelessly into a secluded
corner. Nobody knows that the prints from Michael An-
gelo were borrowed by Harriet this morning ; that though
she will keep, and thoroughly enjoy them, for days to come, it
had been a special object to have them here to-night, and as
yet they have been barely looked at.
Many things are every-da3 T and everywhei'e, now, like silver
forks, that did not use to be ; but there is a time, with all re-
finements, before every-day ; a time of representatives and
occasions.
The portfolio was on the pier-table ; the freshest music was
scattered on the open piano ; the new reviews had had their
leaves carefully cut, that was the last thing Mrs. Holgale
did, when she was too tired to do anything else, before she
changed her morning-gown ; Aunt Ildy looking on with her
severel} 7 practical nose ver}' much in the air. All had been
" seen to," as sedulously as the tea furnishings on the cool,
white-draped table, the fresh flowers in the vases, and the
polishing of the needless fire-irons.
It expressed their tastes, or it could not have been there ;
it told truly of the occupations and the culture they chose
and aimed at ; it was so far honest ; but it was just as much
a " setting out" as the rural dame's whose whole glory is in
her bountiful cheer, her seven kinds of unapproachable
cake, and four of miraculous preserves.
What did it amount to, beyond the setting-out and the
clearing up?
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 271
The talk, the ideas, would be just the same ; a bringing
forth of best things for company. Would the best things be
any better, or more, for that? Might not something get hope-
lessly soiled, or shattered even, as the precious porcelains and
silken garments do, now and again?
"What did anything amount to ; the honestest and simplest
living ; the doing of daily tasks for duty's sake ? Only a liv-
ing ; making up one's bed to tumble again ; cooking, to eat
and be hungry, and cook again ; wanting, getting, losing ;
beginning over and over ; do we really get on at all?
" Do you like your life, Hope?" I asked, suddenly.
" I'm interested in it," said Hope. " I'd rather finish it than
begin any other."
" As if it were a book to be read ! "
"Certain; just as if ; but not only; you asked as i/, An-
stiss."
" But a book," I answered, "you know, is all between the
covers ; something must come of it before you get through."
" Certain, " she said again ; " people couldn't make the
books so, if the real thing wasn't ; it is all between the covers."
" Perhaps ; but the all of some books isn't much worth while.
You wait, and wait, and expect, and finally it shuts up and
hasn't told anything. It's hard work to read some books,
Hope."
" Never mind the books, then, any more. I dare say some
aint made right ; but the real thing is, you see ; talk about
that. Don't you often, when you are watching and hoping
for anything, take a kind of clear comfort the longer you wait ?
Because then it seems as if it must come soon."
" H-m ! I dcm't know ! I think it makes my throat feel
dusty."
" And then water is so good to drink. That's like what
Mrs. Whistler used to say. She used to know when good
things were coming. Her mouth was made up for them so."
" We may make up our mouths all our lives long, I guess,
for some things ; and go out of the world with them made
up."
" Certain."
272 HITHERTO:
" What do you keep saying ' certain ' for, Hope? " I asked,
crossly. " That's three times."
"Is it? Well, it's true, every time." Hope laughed, with
absolute good-humor. "And nothing's certainer than the
last one. I think this world is, just, for us to make up our
mouths in. And after that, comes the blessedness, for those
that have found out what to hunger and thirst for."
It was a very pleasant tea-drinking, indeed.
We were now in early September. The evenings were
softly cool. Of those who had left their city homes a while,
for the fields or the sea-beach, many had returned. Up and
down the street in which the Holgates lived were bits of gar-
dens at the backs of all the houses, and balconies ran along
the* drawing-room stories, upon which long windows were
thrown open, and there people came out to sit under the little
patch of starlit heaven that darkled and shone above from
roof to roof across between these and the other opposite blocks
whose gardens ran clown to the same paved lane.
There were vines, lifting their great, green, clustering leaves
and tossing their light tendrils in the evening wind ; there
were deep horse-chestnut trees rearing their billows of verdure,
and there was the smell of many flowers. A suggestion of the
country ; an outbreathing of the same sweet grace from the
true-hearted earth, unspoiled beneath the crush and burden of
a city, that the wide fields gave out of their unsmothered life.
Inside, the rooms were bright ; pouring their light out
through muslin draperies into the vines and tree-tops.
Thei'e was the fragrance of delicious tea, that somehow is es-
pecially fragrant in summer warmth, and coming forth in little
whiffs upon sweet outer ,air.
People took this little evening comfort in the city then ; and
there was a gentle, social feeling of the rest and refreshing at
the day's end, and everybody's bits of green and blossom
helped everybody's else, and the bright, open windows were
like pleasant watchfires telegraphing back and forth from
household to household. Now, from May to November there
are long ranges of closed shutters and cobwebbed railings ; the
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 273
gardens are only disused clothes-j^ards, and strange cats walk
about the balconies in the darkness.
I liked this glimpse of city life with its country flavor.
There was something delicate in it that you get in anything
homoeopathically taken, which, quaffed freely, loses some mys-
terious power or charm. It was like a sip of rare wine.
Hope and I sat outride ; the Miss Growes came, too, and a
young Mr. Upfold who accompanied his sisters to these gath-
erings, taking the sociality without the metaphysics.
"They always did like the crust of the biscuit best, and I
couldn't bear it ; so they gave me all the soft," said he. " It's
my perquisite."
He made us very comfortable with a tea-poy, and went to
and fro, bringing fresh-filled cups, sugar, cream, and cakes.
" How still it is ! " said Hope ; " almost like Broadfields ; and
yet, what houses and houses full of people, crowded together ! '
I think it is a strange feeling to live in a great city. All
walls, and walls ; built to shut up lives. Nobody knows what
is close by. It makes me think " Hope stopped.
"Well, Miss Devine, of what does it make you think?"
asked young Upfold. He had just brought her the sugar-bowl,
and Hope had forgotten she wanted it.
" Are you going to have thoughts, too? It is a terrible way
people have got into lately ; it reminds me, sometimes, of my
little niece asking about her soul. She had a notion it was a
kind of an oval-shaped thing, lying across inside her bosom ;
and she wondered what it would walk about on when it got to
heaven. I think we are all getting to be pure ideas, and the
wonder is what we shall walk about on ; or if we do, how we
shall look? That was what puzzled Rosie ; she thought legs
would be so funny. But I should really like to know what
you. thought of; you look as if it were something that
came ; not a bullet that you had run carefully beforehand, and
were waiting for a chance to fire off. They alj. carry such lots
of ammunition, Miss Hope ! "
" I don't," said Hope, laughing. " Not a single cartridge.
And I shouldn't know how to load and fire, if I did."
" ' It made you think,' I do hope you'll tell me ! "
18
274
I dare say Mr. Upfold fancied he had struck a vein tli.it
would last awhile ; that he was fairly started on a half-hour's
bantering small-talk, such as most girls would have been
ready for, and made much of; a beseeching and withholding
of something just enough, or little enough, worth while to
serve the pretence ; as children play " button, button."
I think he was very much surprised *when Hope lifted up
her golden-brown eyes upon him, the smile subduing softly on
her face, and said simply :
" It made me think of the many mansions."
" I believe it did," he answered at once, quietly, and with a
deference ; paying tribute, in words as simple as her own, to
her reality. " Will you tell me how?"
" So near," she said ; " and yet we know so little. But it is
a comfort they are there ; and we can see the light."
"Do j'ou always think such things as that?"
" I think a great many little beginnings. So does every-
body, I suppose. Everything is like something else, and puts
us in mind, you know."
" I am afraid you ought to think of your cup of tea, just
now ; or will you let me get a hot one? And you haven't had
a bit of cake, have you ? "
He spoke as if he would like to do a little service for her.
Perhaps something so like angelhood gleamed out upon him,
that he would like to bring her food and drink, and prove her
mortal.
" Oh, no, indeed ! " said Hope. " I mean the tea it is
quite nice. But I would like a little more cake, presently, if
you please."
I wondered at Hope's charming little easy way. She had
never been in a company like this ; yet she was so at home !
But I need not have wondered. She was too simple to be
anything but easy. "Such drawing-room" was " simply a
section of infinite space," after all ; and in no essential way
different to her from Mrs. Hathaway's best parlor, or the fern-
pastures about Red Hill.
After we had done drinking tea and eating cakes, we stood
about, and just within, the windows, looking at the company,
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 275
and catching, from the nearer groups, the tone of conversa-
tion. The Miss Growes went to the table to look at the
prints. Harriet was turning them over, and talking rather
learnedly about them.
Mr. Upfold asked us if we would like to see.
" I don't know airvthing at all about them," answered
'Hope; "and I don't believe I should find out enough to
enjoy them, looking at them in this way. I should like to
have them all by m}*self, or with somebody who could explain
them. I shall try and ask Miss Harriet to-morrow ; for I
should like to understand."
" I wonder if there is another girl in this room, that would
give an honest answer like that ! " exclaimed Mr. Upfold.
" Oh, they all know ; or have had some chance to know,"
said Hope. " I never saw anything of the kind before ; and
I haven't read about Michael *Angelo. But I mean to, now.
Everything doesn't come all at once, to anybody."
It was funny to watch young Upfold's face. Every time
Hope opened her lips, she said something which called out
that mingled expression, through slightly lifted brows, mouth
playing with half-checked smiles, and bright, quick flashes
from the eyes, which told of surprise, amused appreciation of
her exquisite freshness, and an unfeigned pleasure and
admiration.
Once he turned round to me.
" I wish I could get her out there in the middle of the room
among them all, and make her talk," said he. " It would
startle them like a little sun-shower."
"It would be like the little child set in the midst," said I.
"Tell me honestly. Don't you think they pretend
awfully?"
" Your sisters ! Our hostesses ! All their friends ! "
" Welt, you can't say, to be sure. But I should like to get
at what she makes out of it. Miss D.evine ! what do you
think of all this fine talk ? Do you believe the} r 've got so far
as to ' think French ' ? Do you suppose they breathe tran-
scendentally ? Or is it all practice and best gowns?"
Hope glanced about upon the groups, with not a bit either
276 HITHERTO:
of presumptuous judgment or sarcasm, any more than of timid
over-impression, in her manner.
"I suppose it is all real," she said; "or they would not
take the trouble. But I don't know it seems, doesn't
it a little bit as if they were looking in the glass all the
time ? Like trying on things, some of it ? "
Mr. Upfold's laugh broke suddenly upon the low, uniform
key of conversation around the room, and heads were turned
toward us.
He wheeled slightly and easily, giving his back to the com-
pany, and his merry face to us.
" Capital ! " said he, with a subdued emphasis. " New
phraseology, a too ' objective subjectivity.' I haven't got
to thinking in it yet, Miss Devine ; rnais je le parle assez pour
ne me faire comprendre."
" Thank you, Mr. Upfold," replied Hope, demurely.
" Which is the French?"
He laughed out again.
" Don't, Miss Hope ! " he cried. " They'll find you out
and get you away. The forty she-bears will come out of the
wood and carry off the two naughty children. I want to be
naughty and happy a little while longer."
" After all, Mrs. Holgate! I and my lion! Quite tame
and amenable ! "
" Amenable to good fortune, Mrs. Holgate. I was detained
in town this morning, and this afternoon a letter came, which
did away with the necessity for my leaving, and in fact,
obliged me to remain. My friend, whom it was needful for
me to see, will himself be in the city to-morrow."
These last sentences, in two voices, came to me distinctly
across what Hope and Mr. Upfold were saying at the same
moment. They were spoken beyond the folding-doors, at the
entrance to the further parlor, near which Mrs. Holgate stood.
Grandon Cope and the eldest Miss Upfold had just come in
together.
There was a buzz in my head then, for a second, and the
room and all I saw in it gave a queer little jerk across my
eyes, and while it cleared and straightened again as instantly,
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 277
I saw that Mr. Cope had gone across the front parlor, right up
to Aunt Ildy. She, with a very great amazement in her face,
was making, as to the rest of her, a deliberate, complete, old-
fashioned, New Oxford courtesy.
The groups broke up, with the interruption and the fresh
attraction. People waited to be introduced. Mrs. Holgate
fidgeted a little at his occupation with Aunt Ildy. He
seemed, indeed, in no manner of hurry ; but went on asking,
apparently, a great many little questions, which Miss Chism
replied to with her properest manner, somewhat stiff and
unused, her chin drawn back with a decorous dignity ; smooth-
ing carefully, as she spoke, the fingers of her right glove with
those of her left hand, in which she held, exactly by the mid-
dle, her best pocket-handkerchief. She never looked at me.
Presently, Corinna Holgate came and took Mr. Upfold
away. Another gentleman old Mr. Growe joined them
as they paused by a table in the front room near where Aunt
Ildy stood, on which was a tall, slender-stemmed vase of clear
glass, holding a single lily-like blossom of some rare plant.
They stood, admiring the flower for a minute, and then Co-
rinna dexterously turned and introduced both her companions
to Miss Chism.
It made Aunt Ildy quite pre-eminent for the time being.
Mr. Cope did not immediately come away ; and she stood
surrounded, like any young, brilliant woman, with the best
masculine attention of the room. It had its effect, as a single
such moment will have with a woman who only gets a moment
of it, let her age be what it way. I detected the pleased
" objective " in her ; in her sober, old-fashioned properness,
with a decided access of best behavior, she was trying it on.
She alluded to it afterward. It was the point for her
approval, in an evening in which she had found much to
despraise.
" It was very pretty and attentive of Corinna ; and Mr.
Cope was particularly polite. You can always tell a gentle-
man by his manners to elderly ladies."
From Aunt Ildy, he came at once to me. She had been
obliged, I know, to reply in the affirmative to his inquiry if I
278 HITHERTO :
were with her, though she carefully refrained from any glance
in my direction ; much us children do, when they are playing
at " hide a thing," and are telling " how high water."
There was only time for a mere greeting ; only time for the
room to give that odd jerk again before my vision as he ap-
proached, and then for me to answer properly and quietly his
salutation, and to put my hand in his for an instant as he of-
fered it ; for him to say he had had no idea that it was here
we were staying, that it was a great surprise to meet us ; to
tell him " Yes, I liked Boston very much indeed ; " that " it
was not quite certain yet how soon we should return to New
Oxford ; " to ask, rather suddenly, " if Miss Hare were well, and
the family at South Side ; " and then they came and got him
away.
They divided him round ; introducing him to one and an-
other ; everj^body expected something wonderful from him ;
and almost everybody, I suppose, was ready with something
as nearly wonderful as possible to say to him.
But the wonderful thing he did was to stick loyally to
commonplace ; he seemed determined not to be deep or grand ;
he broke up all congested talk ; he stirred the company to
simple, genial circulation.
He told funny things ; he talked railroads with old Mr.
Growe, and just when that was getting to be long and mo-
nopolizing, he broke it off, and made him laugh most untrans-
cendentally and unspeculatively, at a story of a countryman,
unweaned from stage-travelling, beside whom he had been
seated in the train, coming down, and who, after many extra-
ordinary private inquiries of himself, had lifted up his voice
suddenly, and hailed the conductor at the farther end of the
car with, " I say, driver ! look here ! where does this team
dine?"
" There is nobody," remarked Grandon Cope, " more in-
tensely green than a Yankee, when things are new ; precisely
because his faculties all waken so alertly to a surprise ; there-
fore, also, he accustoms himself with a corresponding quick-
ness to the new conditions ; they are old to him, when the
first jerk is over ; next week that man will be putting to prac-
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 279
tical advantage the facility he has just fairly realized ; next
year he will be planting crops and raising stock with refer-
ence to the railroad market ; and in five years Jie will be one
of a corporation, perhaps, petitioning for new charters, and
buying lands along the routes. Nothing throws the Yankee
really off his balance. If the earth's axis were to shift sud-
denly, he would suffer the convulsion with a certain cat-like,
wide-awake-and-watchfuf spread of every astonished capacity,
all abroad for the transition interval, but coming down on his
feet, and ' located ' in the best prospective latitude before the
earthquakes were well over."
Presently after, getting away from Mr. Growe, and leav-
ing the laugh yet broad upon his face, he was noticing with
admiration a bouquet of brilliant flowers, in which the vivid
coloring of autumn was mingled with the lingering delicate-
ness of summer hues, and asking Harriet Holgate if she hud
ever seen a piano kaleidoscope. Then all the carefully scattered
music was hastily slid together, and dropped into the canter-
bury ; the lid was raised, the lamp placed, and he showed us
the effect, wreaths, crowns, stars, masses, shifting and
glowing in marvellous reflection, from the vase of bright blos-
soms, as he held it, and moved it slightly and gently in the
full intensity of the light.
It was while they were still busy with this, that, resigning
the flowers to Mr. Upfold, he went first to the other end of the
instrument and took his own turn of observation, and then
moved quietly round and came over again to Hope and me.
" Have you got all yom- questions answered, Miss Au-
stiss? " he asked. " Have they solved everything?"
" Here ! "
"Why, isn't this the place? I thought Boston was the
Key, at the end of the book of the generations, where all the
riddles were unravelled."
"Into new conundrums?"
I answered him in his own way ; but why did he take that
way with me?
Did he not know ? Had not Augusta told him ? Was there
not a displeasure in his heart as there was a self-reproach in
280 HITHERTO :
mine? What was the use of talking outside the truth that
was between us ? "Why did he not rather keep away ?
While I stood before him, with my face down, knowing his
bent upon me, thinking these things, showing them, per-
haps, liis face changed ; I saw it when I lifted up my eyes
again at his next words, that were different also.
" Yes. You will find out that."
" That it is all puzzle, and that there is no way out? "
"No. But that theory and introspection will not help you
out. It is only living that unravels."
"Hope would say, the door isn't through the looking-
glass."
" Hope would say quite true," he answered, with a smile,
and a quick glance at her that had a question in it. " You
would only shatter your ideal, and wound yourself. But how
came you, Miss Hope, to say that, and what if you please
is the rest of it ? "
" Mr. Upfold said it was objective subjectivity," said Hope,
mischievously.
" Hope thought," said I, " that people were trying on their
ideas."
" Precisely," said Grandon Cope. " They mean nothing
false ; they are eager after the true the beautiful ; but they
think they can lay hold of it abstractly ; they forget that it
must grow out of them, that it cannot be gathered, or bor-
rowed, or put on ; they forget the lilies of the field, and how
they only grow, and God takes care of the glory."
"The older the world gets," he continued, "I think the
more it does try on ; and the less real, simple, first-hand liv-
ing there comes to be. There is too long a story behind.
Almost everything seems to have been done. Somebody
thinks a great thought ; it comes through years and distances,
or out of a different life, to other somebodies ; and they, see-
ing it is something, fancy they can straightway jump into just
such thinking, and how fine that will be ! Or, out of peculiar
condition and character, time and temperament, grows some
peculiar social brilliancy ; and at once you see, as soon as
they hear of it, bright Yankee women flinging up their own
A STORf OF YESTERDAYS. 281
later speciality and opportunit} T , which the world has come to
and waits for, and turning themselves into Madame Reca-
miers, and their home-y back parlors into French salons. We
are in danger of tiding on our very patriotism. We are so
full of the Declaration of Independence and the battle of
Bunker Hill, that if some new national emergency were to
arise, I think the first effect would have more or less of the
looking-glass about it. If the occasion were real, the real
thing would come, and it would be at the bottom all the while ;
but the first popular apprehension would be a good deal of the
new, grand attitude, the magnificence of being forefathers;
and o\\v first battle might not be a Bunker Hill."
" Living is as great a puzzle as thinking," said I, going back
to his first word, which weighed with me. " And gets as
easily snarled up. And one snarl drives you back into the
other."
" You mustn't try to see thi'ough the whole* skein, or to
straighten it all out into a single thread before you begin to
wind ; that makes a snarl, always. There is alwa} 7 s an end,
and that is what you have got to take hold of. If we each did
that, and followed it simply, we should by and by see round,
perfect lives, ready for God's tapestry of the future, instead
of a-11 the world's yarn thrown confusedly into a heap, and
everybody tossing and twitching at it, pulling it into hard
knots in the attempt at brilliant, comprehensive ingenuities,
or \)y way of showing how much farther one could see into
the tangle than another."
"But if one gets hold of the wrong end at the first?"
" Still it would unwind with patience. There would be
loops to go through, and twists to reverse, and it might not be
eas}- or pleasant. But there always comes some smooth run-
ning to every skein, before all is done."
" Would 3 T ou give up the ideal, and the thinkers, then? "
" No. Not any more than I would give up the astrono-
mers, and the grand glimpses of the Cosmos. But they must
not be in a hurry ; they must remember that they are only
small observers ; that it is the living thqt unravels. They
can't stand at any one point in time or in development, and
282 HITHERTO:
think out the whole eternal fact and drift of being, any more
than from a single- attitude in time and space of the great
heaven, we can read all the tremendous rcrysteries of its
circles and motions. It has got to be lived out, in God's
leisure and man's obedience, as the story of the aeons is told,
little by little, in the slow shifting of the stars."
" Are you having it all to yourselves in this corner?"
Mrs. Holgate fidgeted up to us, catching some of the last
words, "aeons," I think, startled her especially, and
seeing Grandon Cope's face alight with eloquence, and Hope's
with listening.
"What are you three about? What is Mr. Cope saying?
I am afraid the rest of us are losing a great deal."
Mr. Cope was like the tea and muffins ; he was to be handed
round ; the family should have been helped last ; Hope and I,
as partly at home, should not have taken so much of the best
things to ourselves.
" Don't take me away," said Grandon Cope, changing his
manner humorously. " I couldn't do it again ; indeed, I
didn't mean to do it at all."
A hostess should never make ineffectual movements among
her guests ; there come awkward moments, so, as to an in-
expert actor, " de trop " upon the stage, and with no resource
of by-play.
Mrs. Holgate stood irresolute for an instant, and then
moved on to ask Miss Upfold to sing.
During the stir of finding music, and restoring the piano to
order, Grandon Cope fell back upon my other side, away
from Hope, and while the prelude was playing, he spoke to me
again, in a low voice.
" Don't go through false loops, by any means ; nor yet, be
in a hurry to break j-our thread and make new ends. Be true,
and you will be sure ; and you will neither tangle your own
skein nor any other. Are you going home soon? "
" I suppose so ; before very long ; I think we must," I an-
swered, in a hurried, difficult voice. I felt the quick, con-
scious flush leap up into my face, and burn there as if it never
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 283
meant to go away ; and there was a pulse in my throat that
choked and pained me.
They had talked it all over, then ; and I had gained nothing
by coming away ; it was all waiting for me.
" Augusta wants j r ou ; she has plans to tell you of, in which
you are included."
I don't know what he thought of me ; of course I under-*
stood ; it was the wedding that was to be soon, perhaps at
once ; and I had not a word of friendship or congratulation ;
not even a smile ready for such news ; my blushes were all
used up upon myself; I was only full of distress and per-
plexity ; I was almost angry with worry.
The singing began, and we could not talk any more.
Afterward, when the company broke up, and he was taking
leave, he came to me and said good-night, very kindly. He
meant that I should not be frightened, or troubled ; it was the
purpose of his whole manner. I saw it, and it troubled me
the more. Yet I was glad that he did come and say good-night.
The next morning, at breakfast, they talked over the party,
as to whether it had been a success. Evidently, they were
not quite satisfied.
"I was disappointed in Mr, Cope," said Mrs. Holgate.
" He seemed to break everything up. He wouldn't really talk
at all."
" He wouldn't be shown off, that's all," said Corinna. " If
Mary Upfold hadn't said ' I and my lion,' I believe he would
have behaved better."
" It turned into just a common sort of good time, at last,"
said Harriet. " But I don't know that I didn't rather like
it."
" Why, my gracious ! " said Aunt Ildy. "What else would
you have ? What are parties for ? "
" I think social intercourse, among cultivated people, ought
to be something better. Something more, at any rate," re-
plied Corinna.
"And suppose they aint all so terribly cultivated?"
"We have aright to expect it," said Corimm, magnifi-
cently. " If one takes the trouble with one's self, one has a
284 HITHERTO :
right to demand the like culture in others. Otherwise, they
are hardly worth while in any way."
" Highty-tighty ! " exclaimed Aunt Ikty, pushing back
her chair. " It's the same old Satan, after all ! "
They were very good-humored, and they laughed at this.
" I'll tell you one thing," resumed Aunt Ildy, not unstimu-
lated with her own success. " I think you make a great deal
too free with solemn things. You talk about souls as if they
were beans ; and you bring- the Lord's name in as pat and
common as the day of the week ; and you undertake to tell
what is grand and good and everlasting, as if you had just
come down from Mount Sinai ; when, all the time, you are just
piling up your own human conceits, as the children of Israel
did their ornaments, to make a golden calf of. There ! "
"But Miss Chism ! Shouldn't we share our life, and
help each other with our best ? Would you shut out religion
from common talk, and only save it up for prayer-meetings
and Sundays ? Can't you say ' God,' except when the church-
bells ring ? Isn't everything religion ? Isn't poetry truth, and
art worship ? "
" Don't talk lingo to rne. I believe in the Bible, and going
to meeting. And that people's souls are something live and
awful, that they've got to save. I don't believe you'll save
'em this wa} r ! What are you thinking of, Hope Devine ? "
Hope's face was earnest ; her eyes intense ; she listened
with an anxiety ; her brows dropped gently, as with some im-
mediate awe that the others knew not of.
" I was thinking," she said, " that perhaps we shouldn't
any of us dare to say so much about these things, if we re-
membered that we couldn't talk behind God's back ! "
" I shall go, girls, the first of the week," Aunt Ildy said
to us, that afternoon, upstairs. " I'm getting tired. Jane
Holgate is a good soul ; but she's a hypocrite. What she
realry cared for was the muffins, and that splendid cake.
Why can't she be contented to take comfort in 'em, in the
plain old way ? And why can't folks eat 'em and praise 'em,
and ask for receipts ? It was better than this ! "
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 285
On Monday we had letters, from Uncle Royle and Lucretia.
Everything was going on well. Lucretia had preserved the'
peaches, and there was " nothing particular to do now, till
the cider apple-sauce, and the barberries, and the pig-killing."
Aunt Ildy was a little mysterious for a day or two, and be-
haved as if she suspected us of trying continually to find her
out, and of supposing that 'it was likely to be very much
worth our while if we could.
Then, all at once, while we were beginning to pack up., she
pinched it out to us, like a dole of something that it was
rather extravagant to let us have at all, and that* we mustn't
ever expect any more of.
" I've made up my mind to go down to'Duxbury, and see
Whitcher Chism's folks. They wouldn't like it, if I came to
Boston and didn't. And they think a sight of their Duxbury
clams."
"Did you ever see the sea, Hope?" I asked, breathlessly
eager, as soon as we were alone.
"Only once," said Hope. "A great many years ago.
And that was where it came into the dock."
So we two girls went away with Aunt Ildy to see the sea.
How good she was to me ! I was just beginning to find her
out.
She did her best by me. Years ago, she knew it was good
for me to be kept strict, and to learn to darn stockings.
Now, with a more kindly and delicate perception, she Jcnew
that the great sea, which I had never seen, would be good for
me. Better than to go back, now, to New Oxford and South
Side.
The great trouble with Aunt Ildy, in her management of
my childhood, had been her belief in human depravity. To
do her justice, the nearer the human nature was to herself,
the more fearful she was for its salvation. She was hard,
watchful, irritating ; always picking after the sliver of original
sin.
" I told you so," said Hope. " I told you how good she
would be."
286 HITHERTO :
CHAPTER XX.
THE SILENT SIDE.
WINTER CHICKENS.
RICHARD HATHAWAY came up, bareheaded, through the
field-path from the cider-mill. He carried his hat carefully in
his hand. He went in at the lower end of the long range of
shed-building that, trim, neat, and comfortable, its open
arches crammed with good oak and chestnut sticks, showing
their ends in a close, even wall, helped to give the well-pro-
vided look that all these outer surroundings do give to a
prosperous New England farm-house. " Solid comfort " a
New England phrase was well expressed and foretokened
by its abundant store.
At this lower end, where Richard entered, was the tool-room,
floored and windowed ; a long ladder was set up against the
firm-built woodpile on that side where its extremity, held in
by a few upright joists, formed the fourth wall, and shut it in
warm from the open shed through all the winter, until the
gradual demolition of the great fuel-heap broke into it late in
the spring, and let in free and pleasant airs.
Richard went up the ladder, hat in hand. The deep gar-
gling cluck of a brooding hen greeted him from the dark angle
of the roof, in the small space left by the compact logs.
" Well, old biddy ! So you're determined? What do you
want with winter chickens, I wonder, old biddy? What would
you have done without a little help, old biddy? How could
you have get along without the hay ? There, there's an
egg, biddy ! And there's another, biddy ! There, and there,
and there ; lots of eggs, biddy ! How do you suppose you'll
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 287
get your chickens down from the woodpile ? Hadn't thought
of that, old biddy, had you? Now, biddy, go to work ! "
The old hen nestled and clucked, half disturbed, and half
grateful, as Richard tucked, one by one, talking to her all the
time, fourteen warm white eggs under her ample feathers.
There was an excellent understanding between the two. From
his great oxen down to the smallest chicken or the shyest
kitten, there was this understanding of help and kindness,
of some intuitive sympathy with their fragment of the common
life on his part, and of recognition and gratitude on theirs
between him and all his creatures. The bees would light
upon him, and lei. him handle them ; only kind, pura hearts,
in clean, healthful bodies, can win, they say, this influence
with the busy, wise, hot-tempered little things.
When he had made his old brown biddy comfortable, Rich-
ard Hathaway came down. He put his hat on his head again,
and sat down for a few minutes on a plough-beam that lay
against the wall beneath the window.
He sat there very quietly, thinking. He took up a piece of
chalk that lay upon the window-ledge and made idle marks
with it.
" Winter chickens ! " he was thinking to himself. " Some
comforts come late. The old biddy's in the right of it, though.
She'll be better off than not to have had 'em at all. I wonder
what kind of winter comforts, if any, will ever come tome? I'm
thirty years old. I don't think I've stopped to count the
years before, since I was twenty. Human beings don't make
a ring every year, as trees do. I've only mafle one ring in
my life since then. I've been waiting all these years, for
that one hope ; and I never thought how long I was waiting,
before. I never knew till lately what it would be to have it
come to nothing, and what a slice of my life would be taken
out and gone. I don't suppose I'm different from other
people. Perhaps in ten years more I shall have got over it.
And then I shall be forty. I wonder what she'll do, and
come to, in ten years ? I've got my mother, dear soul !
And she's sixty-eight. She's hearty. Ten years ? Lord !
let her live ten years, till I've overlived this trouble ! "
288 HITHERTO :
If he had seen it all written down, his thought and his
prayer, he might, perhaps, have hardly known it again.
But it was there ; Heaven read it all. Ah, how man}- prayers
Heaven does read, and, seemingly, flings by unanswered !
Richard Hathaway got up and went into the house, to
see if his mother had oven-wood enough for her baking, and
whether she wanted anything from the store at the Corner.
He put his arm across her shoulders, as he came and stood
by her at her pie-board, and looked in her face with something
that he wist not of giving itself straight from his good soul
to hers.
" Don't work too hard, mother," he said. '
And then he went down to the barn, and harnessed old
Putterkoo, and drove away.
Not from his thoughts ; he perceived that. "" How a thing
follows a man on!" he said to himself. "Like the moon;
that goes miles and miles with you, always looking right over
yQur shoulder just the same."
Day by day, through toil and rest, it went with him, always
the same ; the same love, the same pain, the same patience ;
the same thought of her, and the wonder what the time was
doing for her.
" They must come back pretty soon, I should think," he
said. " They've been gone a good while. Miss Chism can't
leave the old gentleman much longer ; and inpther'll want
Hope. Mother sets store by Hope ; she's a good girl ; I wish
she'd been my real sister. Somcbody'll be coming for her, by
and by, like as* not; if anything should happen to mother
Gee up, old Putterkoo ! Somehow, I don't like leaving her
much, now Hope is away."
He brought her back a new butter-print, a bunch of
daisies ; and he bethought to choose a great, beautiful, cream
color and white cake-bo\Vl with a wide lip, to replace the one
that Martha broke the other day ; and he put a paper of large
white peppermints in his pocket for her. He liked so much
to bring in unexpected parcels for her, and to give them to
her one by one. To give her some last little one, at the end,
just when she thought she had got them all.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 289
Pie found her in the little east-room when he came home and
went in there, with his arms full of his packages. There was
a pleasant smell of good things just baked ; her morning labor
was finished, and she had taken up her knitting-work for the
few minutes before Martha would come in with the dinner.
The white cloth was laid, and the two blue china plates, and
the bright tumblers of clear, old-fashioned glass with their
needle-like crimpings around the edge and base, and the shin-
ing old silver spoons, and the round salt-cellars that matched
the tumblers, and the little tray with sugar-bowl and cream-
pitcher, and two shallow, delicate, gold-rimmed cups ; for Mrs.
Hathaway liked her cup of tea with her dinner, and liked it
alwaj's in a dainty way. A few sticks were burning with a
slow pleasantness on the glittering little brass firedogs, for
the early October day had been somewhat keen, except out
in the broad sunlight ;. and the cat (cats always find the
clean and cheery places ; they know when a room is just swept
and dusted and ready to be comfortable in, as well as any-
body) was curled up on the rug. This is the reason,
doubtless, why a cat is so associated with and suggestive of
domestic cosiness ; she is rarely part of any but a quiet and
orderly picture ; you won't find puss establishing herself will-
ingly in a dirty, confused kitchen ; she will walk through
a-tiptoe, with her shoulders up, seeking rest and finding none.
" It's real nice to find you here, mother," said Richard, as
he put his parcels down and came over to her, the freshness
of comfort touching him, in the place made just so fresh with
comfort every day.
" Why, where should you find me, son? Aint 1 always here
at dinner-time ? "
" Yes ; that's it ; it's always nice. It's the always that
makes it."
" Richie, I can't be here always, you know."
" Mother, don't say that, to-day ! "
" Why to-day?"
"Because I've been thinking all day, somehow, how I could
never get along without you."
" I wouldn't say it at all, Richie, only I can't help thinking
19
290 HITHERTO :
that when the time comes, in a long while, perhaps, but who
can tell ? I couldn't bear to leave you alone. And we might
have happy days together beforehand ; you and she and
I. You ought to have a good wife before many years more,
Richie, and be all settled down. I don't have half stockings
enough to knit either ; and I'm tired of gray yarn," she added,
plaj'fully. "I should like to make some soft little socks
again, in red and white clouds. Mary's children are all too
big, and they wear white boughten ones."
" You're like the old hen, mother ; you'd like some winter
chickens. Did you know the old brown biddy was setting,
away up on the farther end of the woodpile ? "
" There, now, Richard ! that's some of your putting up, I
know ! You do always like to be puttering with the crea-
tures."
" So I do, mother ; that's one reason you and I suit so well.
See how pleased you'll be when she walks out with her four-
teen chickens, and you have to take them all into the back
kitchen and cuddle 'em in a basket ! I lookout for your little
comforts, don't I, mother? That puts me in mind ; I've got
your white Saxony ; here, is it fine enough?"
" Oh, that's charming good, Richard ! Why, that's better
than the last Hobart had, isn't it ? "
" And what's that ? Will that do, too ? "
"Well, now! How did you ever come to think of that,
without my telling? I'll make you some sponge cake to-mor-
row. I never can make it, except in just such a yellow and
white bowl. Why, 3 T es, Richard, it's a beauty."
"And there's what is it? oh, it's a new butter-print. Aint
you tired of the rose ? Those are daisies ; and here's a pair
of spats, to make little prickly balls with, or crimped rolls. I
can show you ; Mrs. Hobart told me how."
Mrs. Hathaway's lap was full now ; and her face was as
pleased as a child's. " It wasn't the things so much," she
said; "but it was being always thought of; and Richard's
way."
" Well, I suppose you must have some peppermints, too,
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 291
to keep you good. You'll have to hold your hands, though,
for the paper's all untwisted."
" Didn't you get a letter from Hope? "
" "Why, how craving you are ! Haven't you got enough
yet? Why didn't you ask before?"
" Well, I thought I'd wait and see. Only when you came
to the goodies, 1 began to be afraid ; for I have been expecting
word from her."
" Didn't you suppose I knew you'd expect the sugar-plums?
Well, there's the letter ; and that is the last thing."
" And that's the best bringing of all," said Mrs. Hathaway.
" I may as well take away the rest, then ; " and Richard
relieved his mother's lap of its burden, and gathered up the
papers and strings, and put the white yarn and the pepper-
mints on her work-table, and went off with the rest to Martha.
Hope wrote :
" Miss Chism has made up her mind to come home on Friday, and
I am glad of it, for I feel as if you had spared me, now, longer than
you ought to ; but I wish I could only tell you what a beautiful time
we have had. It is a kind of a time that don't go off with the having,
but that I can bring home with me to keep. If it had been only
people and shops, as it was in Boston, I might have forgotten in a
little while, at least a good deal of it. But I never can forget the
sea. There has been one stormy day, and a long blow ; the Septem-
ber gale, they think. Yesterday it was pleasant again, and we went
down to the shore to see the rollers. They came in like great, leap-
ing lions, roaring, with terrible white manes. They plunged upon
the land, and grasped at it, but never reached any further than just
where it was measured that they should come. And I kept thinking
of the still, green country away back from it all, where it never gets ;
and how the strangest thing of all is that it is always here, when we
are up there in the stillness, and some of us in our lives long have
never seen it. There have been many things in this journey of ours
that have made me think how close things may be that we know
nothing about. They make me think of ' the land that is very far off,'
and yet perhaps only far off just as these arc, till the minute when all
at once we come to them so easily.
" Dear Mrs. Ilathaway, for all the pleasure I have had, and for
which I am so very thankful to Miss Chism and to you, I do long to
come home again, and I am so glad that by next Saturday I shall see
292 HITHERTO :
you. We shall get home to New Oxford late on Friday, and as Sat-
urday is Richard's day for coining in, I shall be all ready to go back
with him. Give my love to him, and to Martha. I do hope that little
spotted kitten is safe. She did get under the rockers and into the
doorways and everywhere else where she shouldn't be, so. I'm so
afraid if Martha leaves the top of the cistern off, she'll tumble in. I
want to find everything just exactly as it was, safe and well; most of
all, you ; and that you are not tired out or discouraged with my stay-
ing away so Iqng.
" Your thankful and loving,
" HOPE."
There was something scratched, just after " loving."
Hope had been going to write " child," as Mrs. Hathaway
did in the beginnings of her letters to herself. She thought
better of that, and so there was only a thin little place in the
paper instead.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 293
CHAPTER XXII.
SAFE AND WELL.
I HAD written to Augusta Hare, after our arrangement was
made to go to Duxbmy. I thought I ought, after what Gran-
don Cope had said to me of her, and of her wanting me. I
only told her, simply, that I had met Mr. Cope, and what he
had said ; that my aunt had changed her plans, and that we
should be away perhaps a week or two longer.
If I could only put off, and keep away ! It was the only
relief perhaps it was a cowardly one to n^self; but I
felt also that it was the best kindness to others. Allard Cope
would surely see ; it would be as decisive as words. Yet I
could not get out of my mind what Aunt Ildy had declared so
positive!}', with her old-fashioned authority of experience,
"If he has got anything to say, he will say it."
I purposely refrained from giving anything like an address,
though I knew, of course, they could find out from Undo
Ro3'le if they desired. I only mentioned that Aunt Ildy wag
going to take us to visit some friends at the sea-shore. I
hoped Augusta would not write to me, and she did not.
It was wonderful how Hope's nature seemed to bloom and
enlarge, how quickly she received and assimilated, in .ill
these new experiences and opportunities. It gave me a con-
ception of what a simply true glacf spirit might come to in the
kingdom of heaven, and how speedily.
IIo'.v well 1 remember the moment when we first caught the
great breath of the sea! Not a mere flavor, or chill, such as
the east wind brings up into the city streets, or over far-away
fields; but the full, strong, tingling, glorious life with wlm-b
every pulse of the air comes charged, seeming as if truly
294 HITHERTO:
given up out of the pure depth in its mighty, wonderful re-
spirings.
We spent much time upon the shore. We went in parties,
and we went by ourselves ; we had whole long mornings
there. We sat on the old rocks, and looked out upon the
blue boundlessness of air and sea, as into spiritual spaces ;
life the trifle of human doing was left behind upon the
land. How small seemed the few, divided happenings and
concernments, the day's round and motive, back there in
little Broadfields or New Oxford, or the restless and contrary
impulses of the promiscuous city, in view of this great unit,
moving in tremendous majesty, to and fro, drawn only by the
awful influences of heaven !
There could be no better place in which to lose a small or
a selfish regret, or an overweening anxiety. I thought less
of myself; I seemed, indeed, to have got away from myself;
to have left that insignificance behind. I drew in breaths
from an infinite freedom, that seemed to widen my heart and
make it strong.
Hope used to sit in long silences, with that awed light in
her golden, lustrous e3 7 es, and then come back, as it were, just
to say something out of an apocalypse.
" It is like the earth changing and melting away ; turning
from things to spirit ; from glory to glory ; from purer to most
pure. The water and, bej-ond, the sky ; it is like the Hem
of the Garment ! "
She put her hand out toward the white fringe of the incom-
ing waves, that had crept up, in the sunlighted morning tide,
nearer and nearer us where we sat.
It was the last still, summer-sweet morning of those Sep-
tember days ; after that came the gale. I have the picture
of it now in my very heart ; and I hear Hope's word again
always as I look upon it.
They kept us there for more than a fortnight. There is
little such visiting or welcoming in these days. People can
make morning calls, now, twenty miles away; if they go
forty, perhaps they stay to dinner.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 295
We got home on a Friday night. Hope was to stay -with
us till morning.
Lucretia seemed to be divided, in her comfortable reception
of us, between the pride of her own house-keeping, and the
abrupt realization that Miss Chism being 'actually there, was
different from her being only expected. That the keys and the
arrangements were to be given up ; whether she should warm
and feed her first and then do it, or whether she should relin-
quish all authority and let her choose how she would take
care of herself, was a sudden problem of succession. She set
forth her good cheer half deprecatingly.
Hope and I went to bed early, in the front room. "We
were tired and wakeful, both ; Hope was restless with the
feeling of being so near home, and not quite there ; I had all
my old perplexing worries, in the same old place, to get into
again and cover myself up with just as I got into my bed.
So we lay with our eyes wide open, and making many
unquiet turns, for a good while ; now and then speaking to
each other, but for the most part silent, for two reasons : we
were really needing and longing to get to sleep ; and in the
next place, Aunt Ildy was in the adjoining room in her bed
against the wall, and we might reasonably expect a sharp,
warning rap if we trespassed upon the peace of the night with
any chatter.
I think it must have been long past eleven o'clock before
we became quietly unconscious, and I am sure that Aunt Ildy
and Uncle Royle had gone off into dreams nearly two hours
before, to the rhythm of " fifteen two, fifteen four ; " for they
had their long intermitted game of cribbage the first thing
after tea was cleared away, and counted fifteens up to the very
last minute of taking their candles and going off to their
rooms.
It was a little after twelve, perhaps, when, from that first,
sound, grasping sleep from which it is such a pain to be
awakened, like the bringing back to life from almost death,
that I started suddenly with a vague feeling of some noise,
half-dreamed and half-realized, a person knocking somewhere
down below.
296 HITHERTO:
I sat up in bed and listened ; somebody really was moving
about on the broad step at the top of the i-ailed flight that ran
up from the shop door to the house entrance. Somebody in
great, heavy boots, who was tired of waiting, and who made
as much noise as possible upon the little platform that allowed
of three steps to and fro.
I sprang out of bed, and ran to the window ; just as I
pushed it cautiously up, the knocking came again ; this time
with a whip-handle, and rang through the house.
" For gracious sake ! " cried Aunt Ildy's voice at her
open door, instantly ; and Hope was at my side at the
window.
I called to the man.
" What do you want, sir?" I asked.
" Has the folks got home?"
" The family is all at home, yes," I replied, thinking it
well that he should know, whoever he might be, that we were
in full domestic force.
" I come over from the Hathaways," he called back. " The
old lady's had an awful fall, and they want Hope Devine. I've
ben for the doctor, and was to come and fetch her. She'd
better be as spry as she can. Martha's awful scairt."
Hope had lit a match and a candle, and the light, as I
turned round and saw her in it, showed her deadly pale, but
she never said a word, only put her feet quickly into her slip-
pers, and threw a flannel gown on. She was downstairs, and
at the door, before I could make Aunt Ildy understand.
" Has the doctor gone to Broadfields ? " we heard her ask,
as the man came in.
"Yes, I didn't lose no time with him; he's used to being
knocked up. I guess I've ben a-trying my fists on that air
door for a matter of twentjr minutes."
" Come in, Jabez, and sit down ; I shall be ready in ten
minutes."
Hope glided swiftly up the stairs again, and passed Aunt
Hdy and me in the entry, with her pale face, still saying not
a hindering word. She sat down on a cricket, drew on her
stockings quickly, then sprang up and flashed herself, as it
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 297
were, into her other garments, one after another, tossed her
hair back from her temples and rolled it into a knot behind,
and had on her bonnet and shawl in less than the first seven
minutes of the ten. I stood and handed her things.
Aunt Ildy had got on her wadded wrapper, and her cloth
shoes, and her frisette, and had gone downstairs ; and when
we came, was giving the man a glass of wine, and some
doughnuts, and hearing the details of what he had to tell,
which Hope had not inquired.
" It was down the back-chamber stairs ; most o' the way, I
guess, from top to bottom, and it's a crooked flight. Martha
says 'twas that air dreadful little cat, a-laying on the step.
She aint moved sence ; and they can't do nothing to git her
out o' the sog."
" Drink a glass of wine, Hope, to warm you," said Aunt
Ildy, fairly putting it to her lips, for Hope hardly noticed
what was said. " The man's in a chaise, and I can't hinder
you to get ready, either ; but I'll be out there by sunrise. I've
told Royle, and sent him back to bed, so's to get him up
again in season."
Hope swallowed the wine, and it brought a kind of sob
with its stimulation ; but she still said nothing, only kissed
Aunt Ildy and me, and passed the same swift, pale vis
ion out of the house, the. man following.
It was all over in such a mere fragment of time.
Aunt Ildy and I stood and looked at each other for a min-
ute after the door was shut ; and then she went back into the
sitting-room, and put away the cake and wine.
" O Aunt Ildy ! " I cried, going after her, and standing
by. " What will they do?"
" I can't talk about it, child, I've got to save up. I shall
take six drops of camphor, and give you six ; and we must
just hush up and go to bed again. I've got to sleep from no\v
till half-past four o'clock."
That very first morning at home, while Aunt Ildy was out
at Broadfields, Augusta Hare came down to see me.
" You behaved very badly," she said, with her graceful, pol-
ished playfulness, " running away and never coming to see
298 HITHERTO :
me, as was proper. But I have made up my mind to get it all
over, and for fear, if I waited, I should find myself in duty
bound to stand upon my dignity again, I have come right to
you. You see I must have you for one of the bridesmaids ;
not regular bridesmaids either, there is to be no set, equal
number of ladies and gentlemen ; but Grandon's brother,
and some of his particular friends will be about him, and
mine with me ; just grouped, you know, a sort of general,
friendly backing up. And it is to be in a fortnight, now ; the
cards are just going out. I think I am very good, Nannie,
and I think you can't refuse."
*' I do thank you very much," I said, touched by the persist-
ence of her kindness, and her notice of me ; " but } 7 ou don't
know. Something has just happened. They are in great
trouble out at the Farm, and Aunt Ildy is there. Mrs. Hatha-
way has met with a terrible accident. I couldn't think of
dresses and weddings, now, Augusta."
Augusta's face changed. She looked really, more than dis-
appointed ; as if some nicely adjusted plan had gone all wrong
with a sudden, insuperable difficulty.
" Besides," I began again, and stopped. The rest was in
my face, though ; in my consciousness, at any rate, so vividly
that it touched hers magnetically.
" There isn't any besides," she answered quickly. " There's
no use in building windmills on purpose to run against. I
believe I frightened you more than I needed, out there at the
Hathaways', that day. You were nervous, and I was looking
too far ahead, into my hopes and dreams for you, perhaps,
Nannie. My own dreams had just come true, you know, and
it seemed as if everything was going to turn out all at once,
like the end of a novel ; or else be spoiled in some foolish
hurry. We had better not have talked about it that day,
Nannie. Everything always works out right, if people just
keep straight on. That is what Grandon says. You don't
mean to be rude to the Copes, surely, and throw back all their
friendship in their faces, for no reason at all ? Especially now
that 1 am going to be a Cope ? " she added, with her little air
of confident winsomeness.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 299
I could see afterwards how it all was, and what it meant.
I could not understand, at the moment, either Augusta Hare's
magnanimity and patience, or the motive of her policy.
Why should she care so much for what became of me ? Why
should I have been any part of her dreams?
It was simply a mixture of vanity and good-nature, added
to a natural love for planning and contriving, and a great tact
in carrying things out.
Augusta must always be the centre of the tableau ; I should
do excellently well as an accessory. She liked me, and she
thought I should never really be in her way. I admired her,
too. She had always been fond of that childish homage of
mine.
She was to marry Grandon Cope. In the charming sur-
roundings of South Side, she was to be the conspicuous ob-
ject ; the young, elegant matron ; the mistress in years to
come. The full light was to fall upon her. It would depend
very much upon whom Allard married, whether any shadow of
rivalry interfered, or any cross light spoiled the grouping. It
would be all very well if he took quiet, little, grateful me.
That would be quite comfortable, and really help to complete
her happiness. She knew all about me, and liked me, and I
looked properly up to her. There was thorough kindness, too,
as far as it went ; she knew it would be such an excellent
thing for me ; so much better than I might have expected ;
and it would be such a satisfaction to have assisted to bring it
about.
She had had time to think that she had made a misstep ;
that the light in which she had put affairs in that talk at
Broadfields was fatal, in my then state of feeling, to the
whole. Perhaps she discerned somewhat, with that subtle
tact of hers, of the secret, hitherto undefined influence, that
suddenly shaped itself to a dim recognition with me, and
knowing that now, in the nature of things, this must change,
or subside into its suitable place, she judged that the undue
revulsion of my feelings might, perhaps, be temporary ; that
all would look different to me again by and by.
She wanted to get back to safe, uncommitted relations; to
300 HITHERTO .'
let things work a little longer ; so, perhaps, they would work
out. Allard must speak for himself, when the time came. I
think she had doubtless become very elder-sisterly and inti-
mate with him already, and won his confidence in that marvel-
lous way in which she won eveiybody's. She had probably
eased his mind as she was trying now to ease mine ; persuaded
him that this going away would be quite as likely to result in
his favor as otherwise ; that girls had to have time to find
themselves out ; if they were let alone awhile, they would
know better what they wanted.
I can somehow imagine just what she would have been
likely to say.
She left me that morning, remarking that she would come
in again, or send, to-morrow ; she should be anxious to know
how Mrs. Hathaway was ; she was so excessively sorry that
anything should have happened to her.
The next morning, when her little note of inquiry came, I
had to answer that Aunt Ildy was still at the Farm ; that
Mrs. Hathaway continued in the same strange, dangerous
state ; that I supposed there was little hope that she would
recover her injuries ; that the doctor feared there was broken
nervous connection in some part of the spine, from the shock
of the fall ; that they were all in great trouble, and that I was
greatly troubled for them.
Neither she nor I spoke further of the interrupted plans.
Augusta was always well-bred ; she always gave way to pro-
prieties.
So a week went by. Aunt Ildy drove in twice to see how
we were getting on, to bring us news, and to get things that
she wanted. At the end of the week, dear Mrs. Hathaway
was gone. Out of the still, ntysterious half-death, half-life,
that held them all in such pain and anxiety, she passed, with
a hardly perceptible change at last, quite away from their
sight and hold, into that fulness of life which needs not the
body, but leaves it to its rest.
And Richard Hathaway was all alone.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 301
CHAPTER XXIII.
WINTER DATS.
WHAT would Hope do now ?
People began over again with that, already.
"She can't stay .there with that young man, of course,"
said Lucretia ; and everybody else, we knew, was saying the
same.
It made me cross.
" It's her home, Lucretia," I said, snapping up all Broad-
fields over Lucretia's shoulders. " Why shouldn't she stay
there ? ' That young man ' has always been there ; it's noth-
ing new ; and she's used to his ways, and nobody could make
him half so comfortable as she can."
" That's for .he and she to settle betwixt themselves," re-
plied Lucretia, with short significance.
" I shall come back to-morrow, and stay a week," Aunt
Ildy said to Hope, the afternoon of the funeral, when we had
got back to the Farm. "That's as long as I can % stay;
Royle's rheumatism is beginning to plague him, and he wants
me ; but that'll give you time to look round and settle your
plans."
" Why, Miss Chism, I haven't any plans to settle ! " said
Hope, simply. " I shall just try and keep everything on, her
way. I don't want there to be any difference, except "
The thought of the great difference stopped Hope's word with
tears.
" Child, can't you see that it is different? Do you suppose
you can stay on here ? Richard Hathaway's got to have a
house-keeper. You aint old enough."
Hope's face flushed, but not with the idea Miss Chism in-
tended to convey.
302 HITHERTO :
" I don't believe anybod}-, ever so much older, could do any
better for Richard than I would. I know just how he likes
things. Why, Miss Chism, he couldn't get along with any
new old woman ! "
"It isn't that, Hope. Can't you see? It isn't proper.
Folks would talk."
Then Hope saw. Then she grew grandly indignant. Her
pure intent for the first time clashed against the world's care-
ful and ostentatious wall of defences, and struck young fire
against the stones.
" Do you think I would go away for that?" she cried, with
the blaze in her eyes. " When he needs me so, and nobody
else could do ? When his mother depended on me so ? De-
pends on me now, Miss Chism?"
"Well only we aiut quite in the kingdom of heaven
yet," said Aunt Ildy, slowly, and very dubiously.
" We're in God's world, dear Miss Chism, and just where
he has put us every one," said Hope, sweetly and solemnly.
"I knoiv I ought to stay a while and look after
Richard. Everybody mustn't go away and leave him, all at
once. Why, he wouldn't let me go, Miss Ikty, I don't believe,
even if you said so to him ! "
" I shall come to-morrow, and stay a week." Aunt Ildy
returned upon this, and let it rest there for the time.
It ended, in Hope's taking, quietly, without any more talk,
her own way. She stayed on, with Martha and Richard, fol-
lowing her old, simple round of duties, living just as she
always had lived. People talked, of the " strangeness of
her not minding," that was all, of course ; Hope knew little of
what they said, and cared less.
And so the winter went by.
The Grandon Copes were married and gone. Gone to stay
some few months in Washington, during the session ; before
they returned, they would visit Cincinnati, and Professor
Mitchell's new Observatory, a great interest with Grandon
Cope, and an enterprise of .which he and his father had been
among the liberal helpers. Grandon had his own large, inde-
pendent property, bequeathed to him by his English great-
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 303
uncle, the late Hugh Grandon, of the famous London mercan-
tile house of Grandon, Cope, & Co.
And I was settled down again, in the old routine. My life
had 1 gone back into plain prose again. Even the perplexities
that had been a painful excitement, yet still excitement while
they lasted, were over. That afternoon, when Aunt Ildy
would have the fire lighted in the best parlor, and such a cere-
mony made of his coming, like a " conference " among the
Grandisons, when I saw Allard Cope alone, and listened to
what he had to say, and had come determinately, as she fore-
told, and demanded of Aunt Ildy permission and opportunity
to say ; when I had answered him, plainly and sadly, that it
was a great deal better than I had any deserving for, and that
I was ashamed, and sony, and grateful, but that it could not
be, it would not be honest to him to let it be, that winter
afternoon shut down and ended, with the short twilight, the
brief romance also, that had gleamed into my homely life.
When I think of the rest of that winter, I just remember
putting on, day after day, the same dark-brown cashmere
dress, with narrow, bright-colored Persian stripes ; sewing in
the afternoon with Aunt Ildy on a new dozen of shirts that we
were making for Uncle Royle ; putting a fresh part-breadth
matching the stripes carefulty into my dress, when I had
burned it one day against the stove ; setting in new under-
sides to the tight-fitting sleeves when they had frayed at the
elbows ; taking out and putting away the tea-things and fresh-
ening the fire, and keeping on with the shirts, in the evenings,
while Aunt Ildy and Uncle Royle played cribbage between
tea and bed time. I remember Richard Hathaway's sad face
and quiet manner, as he came in every Saturday and brought
Hope's nice butter, fresh and sweet as June all winter. I do
not think I remember anything else.
Allard Cope went to New York, and began to practise law.
The house at South Side was shut up for several months.
Mr. and Mrs. Cope were in Boston. The girls were with
them a part of the time, and for a part were visiting in differ-
ent places among their friends.
Nolhing happened. All the happenings had been in those
304 HITHERTO :
few summer and autumn weeks. Nothing ever would happen,
I thought, again.
It was nearly spring when Uncle Royle was taken down
with that rheumatic fever. He had had a good deal of his
old rheumatic pain and stiffness, all winter ; but during the
mild, damp weather of February he took cold, and after that
a terrible inflammatory attack set in, which laid him up with
tedious and intense suffering for nearly two months.
Then Aunt Ildy and I had our hands full with nursing ; and
then I found out yet more of what Aunt Ildy really was.
She was sharp and imperative. It was, " Here, quick ! "
" Give me that ! " " Run and do this ! " " Don't hinder ;
hush ; there ! let me come ! " But how dearly she did love
Uncle Royle !
I could seem to see the little boy and girl, brother and
sister, between them then, as if they had never grown old,
or slow, or hard.
We kept his limbs swathed in wet, cool bandages ; and he
thought, in the wanderings of fever and pain, that he was a
child again, wading in a brook ; and Aunt Ildy humored him, and
talked about the fishes, and the brook lilies, and school-time ;
he got his real anxiety about his business all mixed up with
his fancied boyish Worry about being late at school, and miss-
ing his lessons ; " but I must keep my feet in the water a
little longer, Ildy," he would say ; " I must go into that
deep place once more ; I want to feel the water up to my
knees ; it takes the fire out."
And she would tell him "there was plenty of time; the
academy quarter-bell hadn't rung yet."
" You'll tell me when it does, won't you? I think I should
like to lie down here, and just go to sleep a minute."
And then, perhaps, she would shake her finger at me, in
her sharp, impatient way, and point to the window-shutter,
with a push at it in the air, for me to go and shut it closer ;
and all the while, her voice would be so kind to him, saying,
"Yes, Royle, go to sleep ; it's shady now ; and there's plenty
of time ; " and more than once I saw tears in her eyes that she
had no idea I knew of.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 305
So I could be patient, seeing truly what was in her, and
what her impatience came from ; and Aunt Ildy and I began
to fit each other more comfortably and kindly, in that hard,
weary time, than ever we did before.
When the days grew sunny toward the end of April, and
as May came in, sweet and springlike this year, Uncle Royle
grew slowly better ; and by the time the buds were bursting
into leaf, and the balm-trees in the lane sent out their full
breath of healing, and we had the windows open in the long,
bright mornings, he could sit up and look out and enjoy it all,
and eat his broiled chicken, or his broth. Richard Hathaway
brought him a chicken every time he came in ; some of a late
autumn brood that were large and beautiful now, fed all winter
with sweet grains, and cared for as he cared for living things.
The spring cheered us all up ; though Aunt Ildy was
" crazed " with the cleaning and the sewing and the thousand
things that always crazed her when the drive was on, and that
were a fearful accumulation now, from the demands of sick-
ness that had so long thrust all else aside.
Lucretia had " expected it," she said ; " there'd ben a look-
in-for of judgment in her mind all along, and now here 'twas.
If there isn't a March wind in the house, there must be a May
thunder-storm ; but 'twill be all the same, come June, let alone
a hunklred years hence."
So she worked on, with a great might, and a canty good-
will, from the attic lumber that must be all turned over once
a year, and freshly bestowed, to the firkins and barrels in the
rambling cellar ; until she declared, with a Spartan triumph,
that " there wasn't a teaspoonful of dust in the house, nor a
bone that didn't ache, through and through, in her body."
Martha came in one clay, from the Farm, shopping, and
stopped for a chat.
" What's the sperrichual use, do you spose, of spring clean-
ings?" sa}'s she. " It's a teachin' world, and so I presume
there's a reason ; though why it wasn't all cleared up after the
Creation, and fixed so's to sta}', has al \vays been one of the
providential mysteries to me. Just think what the world
would be, if it only warn't for dirt! Why, I don't see why
20
306 HITHERTO:
it wouldn't be kingdom come, right off! Take away the wash-
daj^s, and the scrub-days, and the cleanin' up after everything,
and clo'es growin' mean and good-for-nothin' with the grim o'
wearin', and I guess there wouldn't be anj^thing left but the
' rest that remaineth,' and the hallelujahs ! "
Her quaint words struck me. It seemed as if the " putting
on of incorruption " would hold the whole. I remembered them
and told them afterward to Hope. She always had a " spirit-
ual meaning."
" Of course," said Hope. " There's a reason ; the same
reason that runs through everything. It's a teaching world,
as Martha says ; we have to deal with the outside as we ought
to with the in ; they're made to fit, and help. If we didn't have
to scrub and clean, how should we learn to be thorough with
ourselves ? and thoroughness is triteness. I think when we come
to hate dirt in house-corners, we begin to hate it in soul-cor-
ners, too ; and that's precisely what the training is for. I never
thought of it before, exactly" she went on, with her happy
look of new truth ; " but that's how cleanliness is next to
godliness, and God's own sign for it, isn't it? And that's
why busy home-life is so good for people ; we're doing double
when we dust and put right, and we don't even know it.
We're learning, like the babies with their blocks."
" ' A servant with this clause
Makes meanest work divine;
Who sweeps a room, as by God's laws,
Makes that, and the action, fine.' "
I quoted to her.
" Why, who said that? " she asked, quickly.
" George Herbert," I told Tier.
" Did he say any more like it? "
I wish I could put down the words to make them sound like
Hope, as she spoke when she was bright and full, with quick,
pleased thought ; and when a thought was given her that met
hers.
"Did he say any more like it?" The bits of Saxon
syllables her sudden, glad questions or exclamations
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 307
always shaped themselves in such fell like rapid little rip-
ples over her lips ; her tongue rolled, as it were, a swift,
musical reveillee with them ; they were indescribable forth-
springings of an instant, wide-awakened delight.
I found the book for her, and she took it home.
Hope grew just as the plants grow ; she sent out ber rootlets,
and she unfolded the fresh leaves of her own beautiful life, and
from earth and air there came to her continually the feeling
and the influences she needed. Knowledges gathered them-
selves to her ; she came across them ; " everything put her in
mind ; " the most beautiful things were hers beforehand ; she
knew them instantly, by sight ; by sweet elective affinities she
made herself a dweller in the best, without need of deliberate,
purposeful effort of culture, or far, painstaking search. I
thought many times of what Richard had said of her and her
gentle content : " In the middle of her pasture." I thought,
too, of the words that were so like, "He feedeth me in
green pastures ; he leadeth me beside the still waters ; he re-
storeth " he complete th " my soul."
Hope came over often, after the spring business was over
with us and at the Farm.
One day, while she was with us, she fell, two or three times,
into some thoughtful, occupied mood, that seemed strange to
me. Then, at last, just before she went away, she said to
Aunt Ildy, with something of that same quick, rippling Avay
of speech that signified also when a thing was all thought out
and finished in her mind :
" I've come to it, Miss Chism. I've found out it will be best.
And the work is clone, and things are all straight, and summer
is coming, and perhaps Richard can begin to do just as
well without me. But you see where shall I go ? "
She laughed a little fearless laugh, as the last four words
came out in a spin of huny ; as if it were only funny to think
that at the moment she really did not know.
" Come here," said Aunt Ildy, right off.
" Why ! Might I? If I should quite make up my mind,
some day, suddenly, perhaps, might I say that ? "
308 HITHERTO :
" Yes ; that's exactly what you might say ; and the best
thing, too."
"Should I be of any consequence any help I mean?
Wouldn't it be a fifth whee^, Miss Ildy ? "
"You're always worth your bread and butter and your
cake, too. Come whenever you get ready."
.1 sat by, thinking how strangely things came about, all in a
minute ; wondering what Richard Hathaway would do without
her, or if he would let her go ; and feeling how pleasant and
nice it would be if Hope did come to live with us.
But first, Richard had been talking about it this great
while, ever since Uncle Royle began to get better, we were
to go to the Farm, all of us, and stay a week, a week of the
June weather, and the strawberries.
" It would do Mr. Chism so much good to get out of the
town awhile. John Eveleith can manage."
John Eveleith, the young clerk whom Uncle Roj-le had had
from a boy, had managed, all through his illness. Uncle Royle
talked of giving him a partnership. He was getting old, he
said, and could not expect to hold everything in his own hands
much longer.
Richard planned it all, and asked us just as he would have
done years ago.
He had kept his promise. " It was all taken back." He
wanted us to go and come as we had done ; that the old
friendship should be the same.
I was so glad that he did ; that he could ; I thought he was
getting well over it all ; it was nearly a year now. I thought
he had had, in his quiet wa} r , a feeling of pleasant useduess to
me, a fancy that we could " get along " and be comfortable
together ; a gentle liking and tenderness for me out of the
gentleness of his nature, a nature that would only suffer
quietly and be gently disappointed, never rise to storms and
spasms of passion and pain, and that now, after these last
months that had stretched themselves with all their heavier
burden between, he turned willingly and freely to the old,
simple friendliness that he needed, and we might go back into
the summer time together.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 309
It comforted me. It made me almost contented with my
life, that had failed to enlarge itself to my hopes and dreams,
but that held yet some sweet and simple reality.
There were two sides of me. There always were. With
my plain, every-day self, I could take much comfort I could
rearly be satisfied with that side of the things that came to
me. We do not, any of us, stay always wound up to our
highest, or hold at the most intense and painful strain. The
spring begins to relax the moment the key has taken the last
turn. Some homely comfort comes close upon in the very
midst of the sharpest suffering. And I had not deeply
suffered, except from self-blame. I had only come near
enough a joy to see it, and to see that it was not mine. It
was after the same negative fashion that all the pain of my
life had been. Things were withheld. There was something
in me that managed to take pleasure in such things as I had :
I liked the tidiness after the spring-cleaning ; the cosiness of
afternoon work ; Lucretia's exquisitely fresh and nice kitchen,
and the sunshine streaming in, when I went there after the
morning's clearing up, to beat eggs for cakes or puddings ;
the loud readings in new books to Uncle Royle ; Aunt Ildy's
gruff graciousness and strong dependableness ; the feeling
that, in my way, I had grown to be somebody at last ; the
thought of June days at the Farm again, and of Hope's sis-
terly companionship by and by.
There were other things in the world ; I might have held a
far greater gladness ; but a piece of me was somehow glad to
be comfortable in these.
It was not as though I had begun differently ; I had been
used all my life to the next best ; to the making-do ; to the
dolls with eyes that would not shut, and the seat by the high
window with the half-lookout. The possibilities that had
touched me, and that I might not seize, began to seem far off
and long ago. The strange thing would have been to me if
the_y had really become mine.
I think I was always good at giving up, when it was once
hopeless that I should have. Only I liked to go quite away
from that which had been denied me into something else.
310 HITHERTO:
I was very glad of this new plan of Hope's.
It was just what was needed in the cup of our daily living ;
Miss Chism knew it as well as anybody. Something sweet
and gracious should mix itself so, with what else, for very
strength and goodness, might be harsh and acrid, and make it
a real deliciousness.
Hope was always cream to Aunt Ildy's coffee.
A STORY OF YESTEEDAYS. 311
CHAPTER XXIV.
WHAT A VOICE TELLS.
OF THAT WHICH MIGHT HAVE BEEN.
HOPE DEVINE had begun to see it coming, had begun to
discern what this might lead to, this staying on and quiet
comforting.
She did not care what people said, about its being queer.
She knew it was really no queerer now than it had ever been.
She would not even have cared, perhaps, if they had said
very likely some of them did say that " Hope Devine knew
pretty well what she was about ; it was easy to see what the
upshot of all that would have to be." She would not have
cared while Richard sorely needed her, or if it had still been
the best for him.
But when she saw this coming ; this that she did see with
her far-off, sensitive perception, this misapprehension of
himself that Richard might fall into, she said quickly, in
her heart, so quickly that it was not even heroism, " No !
That would not be true. That must not ever happen." And
then she began to think about going away ; and she said to
Miss Chism, that day, what Anstiss Dolbeare has told.
It was June, now; they would be coming soon; that was
the best safety for all.
Hope never doubted, with her loving onsight, that what she
believed to be the truth was yet to come to pass. I think
Hope really loved the truth, whatever she could " see clear,"
and its coming to pass in God's gracious order, better than '
any wish or will of her own. No wish of hers could ripen
against such clear-seeing, or bear the bitter fruit of selfish
pain. Not any more, as she had said, than she could take to
312 HITHERTO:
herself that which was not her own. She was not heroic in
this thing, simply because she was, by her high, pure nature,
so far above heroism. Truly, they who lose their life for
His sake, shall save it.
Richard 'Hathaway, in his silent fashion, was busy with
himself. He had " taken back," grandly and generously, that
which had been only pain and surprise to Anstiss Dolbeare ;
though he took back with it, into his own heart, a dead hope,
grown, to this death only, out of all the years of his life. He
meant to be simple-friendly again, and alwa^ys.
She was coming, this bright June weather, to the Farm
once more, in the old way.
But before that, he began to feel with a secret restlessness,
that was partly self-distrust, and partly a longing out of his
home and heart need, that there was something which perhaps
he had better do. Something that would be fair to Hope ;
something in which an honest, tender affection for her mingled
with the deep love for his dead mother, and his hallowing of
her wishes for him ; something that should give to his loneli-
ness a life-long comfort and peace.
She was his dear little friend, always ; she had stood by him
through it all. Did not God mean it for them both?
Besides, he cared for in his manly, gentle consideration, in
Hope's behalf, that which she disregarded, for his sake, on her
own.
People should not talk about Hope Devine.
And this was all the home she had.
It was beautifully pleasant, all over the Farm, and in the
house. The fields were ploughed, and harrowed, and sown.
The slopes of the farther hill-plantings were crimped in fault-
less brown furrows. The young grain was vivid in green
light, like a shining robe, like nothing but the robe of Hie
that shames our dead weavings, and shows us how the Lord
knows how to clothe, out of the soul itself that he puts
into things ; how our own outgrowth shall clothe us by
and by.
Every leaf was clean and new ; the brook was glad with a
new gladness, as of drops that had never been there before,
A STORY OF YKSTEKDAYS.. 313
yet of a gathered whole that knew itself the same, and knew
also its old, beautiful pathways.
In the house, was New England summer freshness. Every
valance, and tester, and flounce, and window-drapery was
white and fragrant with cleanliness. Every carpet was bright
with a fresh face. Every table and chair was polished to a
smile. It was pleasant just to. move about among it all, and
touch the spotlessness with the ends of one's fingers.
It was pleasant to Hope, who had managed it all ; coming
out after the early tea to the great doorstone under the young,
sweet, breathing shade.
Richard came across the hall with his weekly newspaper in
his hand, that he had brought that afternoon from the office.
Hope's happy face, and the light in her softly stirred hair,
and her pretty figure, full, even in repose, of the same spring-
ing something that was in bough and leaf and breeze, stopped
him. He hardly ever went by Hope without some word.
She turned as he came up.
" Busy little woman ! " he said, in a fond, praising way.
" Not busy now, Richard. It's all finished. Just as it al-
ways was. It seems, somehow, as if she was in the summer
pleasantness, doesn't it?"
"Hope you have never let her go ! You have kept the
feeling of her near, in everything. You don't know ho^ I
thank you, every day. With all my heart, Hope ! "
" I am glad I stayed. It will begin to be easier now."
It was the first time Hope had ever alluded to any question
of her staying. If there had been a question at the beginning,
she could not have remained.
For this reason, it startled Richard now.
He laid his paper down upon the hall-chair by the door, and
came out, nearer to her ; came and stood at her side.
Something very earnest looked out of his true, kind eyes.
" Hope," he said, " you will have to stay here always. I
cannot do without you. I want I wish "
" Richard," interrupted Hope, with her quickest word and
smile, and her simple rippling monosyllables, "you want
me to do just right. I can't stay here all the time, you know.
314 HITHERTO:
I couldn't go, and leave you then; but now I must go soon,
Richard ; but I shan't go far ; and I shall come and see you,
and stay and help sometimes. Don't say one word, Richard,
please; it must be; I know it ought, and my word's
given."
"What word? "Who could there be? "Where was Hope
going? The suddenness, and the puzzle of it, stopped Avhat
he might have said at the moment, and when he began :
" Hope, I can't see. I don't understand. I meant to ask
you, Hope "
Hope interrupted again. She was like a little breeze of
pure, bright air that came and blew away his words before he
could get them ranged in a sentence.
" It's an ought, Richard. It will be best that I should go
away. Your life will come all right, righter than if any-
body stayed and did too much, you see. You are so true,
Richard ; you have always kept one thought so, for so long ;
you have never let anything come between, and you never
will ; you have such a steadfast heart ; it is so right that it
should come to be for you, Richard, that it will. I feel sure
it will. And then, I shall be so glad all my life, that I did
not let any little help of mine, that you might have leaned
on more or longer than you meant, come in the way. And
now, let me tell you what my plan is. I am going to Mi^s
Chism. She wants me. Mr. Royle is getting old ; and Miss
Ildy isn't young, or so strong, I think, as she was. And I
think when once I am there it will begin to come all
right, for cver3 T body. It seems to me I can see just what God
means by it. Why, Richard, sometimes he does lead us, just
a little way, in a path we can see on in ; or he puts some
new light in our eyes for a while, and then we have part of
his own joy, helping to bring his work to pass. I have
looked and looked at it ; and I see it clear. I think I do."
Richard could no more have gone on with what he had be-
gun to say, than if it had been an angel from heaven, instead
of a mortal woman, who stood there by his side. It seemed
almost as if she did come to him, with the very word of the
Lord, as the angels caine in visions of old. And with what
A STOnY OF YESTERDAYS. 315
she said, with her bright, sure prophecy of what was to be
for him, something stirred so in his own heart, something
so sprang to meet the hope she gave, that he knew not only
that all was not dead, but that nothing of it could ever die ;
that in his soul he was true, as Hope said ; steadfast to the
old thought and the one love ; and that it would have been a
mistake and a wrong if he had said the words she stopped
upon his lips.
They stood there, man and woman, at the threshold of a
life that might have been ; tenderness, each for the other, in
their hearts ; comfort that each could give, waiting ; a feeling
of need and longing, real and conscious to them both ; } T et
truth stronger than anything ; patience for God's way and
time chosen in the stead of their own impulsive and precipi-
tate will. And Hope the woman to whom the gift
came did this, and put the gift away ; put it away without
ever looking at it, so that in after time she might have had
any blessed moment to think of, of which she could have said,
Then it was mine. She had never looked at this thing, that
she might have desired, long enouglP to be tempted. From
the beginning it had been decided away from her. It belonged
to some one else.
So she should go her way, unscathed ; her eyes still touched
with the clear, glad light ; her hand in God's.
It was a deep, beautiful, holy moment to them both, a
moment they would remember all their earthly lives, and that
should come back to them in the time beyond, when all things
shall come back and be present, except repented and forgiven
sin.
They sat down, together, there on the great door-stone.
In the June sunset, under the sweet, swinging boughs. They
sat there silently, with thoughts in their hearts that were like
prayers. The evening star came out in the midst of the
western glory, and glimmered high up through the delicate
fretwork the young boughs made against the sky.
Hope knew there was no danger ; that there never would
be, any more ; that God had given her a better thing than
love to keep, a love to give away.
316 HITHERTO:
Richard Hathaway felt himself near all blessed and benefi-
cent presences, in the presence of that woman-friend beside
him. The Father's care, his great, rich meanings for him,
the wide To-Be, in which all waited ; the gentle .pulse of the
invisible mother-love, beating near him in the all-holding pence
and promise ; the steadfast truth that was in him, that had
been saved to him, clear and clean, to live on and claim the
answer and accord that are surely somewhere for all steadfast-
ness and truth ; an unspeakable fulness of all these lifted
and enlarged his consciousness into a grandeur and a blessed-
ness he could not have told of ; that only overswept him and
held him there, under the summer-evening heaven, and at
Hope's side.
They staj^ed there, sa} T ing not one other word ; until the
beautiful planet shone all golden from a sea of blue, the sun-
set splendor gathered slowly, as it were, into its one point of
changeless light, and down upon the earth had fallen the ten-
der gloom that is like the shadow of a shielding Hand ; until the
few still sounds were stiller yet, and the violet perfume came
up richer through the evening dew, and a cooler breath began
to search the green tree-chambers.
Then Richard got up and held out his hand to Hope, taking
hers with a strong, fervent grasp.
" I thank you, Hope," he said, " for one of the best hours
of all my life."
And Hope was thanked.
Away back in the house, moving to and fro between tea-
room and pantry and kitchen, Martha had caught glimpses of
the two sitting out there together.
" That aint no millstone," she said, with three or four
measured, decided nods of her head. " There aint no credit
in seein' through that. But ef ther was, I done it, I guess,
pretty much, even, afore they did. They can't come tellin' me
any o' their news."
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 317
CHAPTER XXV.
OtTT AT THE LEDGES.
IT led to my being back and forth at the Farm again, as of
old.
Richard was so quiet and so kind. It was not as if he had
looked pained and sad, or had been constrained with me. It
did not seem a hard thing for him to have us there. It was
just the old, plain, cordial way ; it did him good, he told Aunt
Ildy, to have people in the house again.
He liked home pleasantness so. That was it. I thought
that if any other woman had come in his way just as I did, it
would have been the same. That it would be the same again,
with somebody else ;. perhaps with Hope.
Hope came home with us after that June visit. Uncle
Royle was better, and was busy in his shop again. But he
took more relaxation, and this summer he bought a horse and
a light wagon, and nearl}- eveiy pleasant day he took a drive.
Very often it was out to the Farm ; and so some of us came
to be there at least two or three times a week, always.
Now that I was left to n^'self, and something of peace had
come back to me, seeing that apparently, according to Aunt
Ildy's word, the chance was already more than even that
" they would both get over it," I began to feel how great a
part of my life would have gone from me if that intercourse
with the Farm had ceased. How Richard Hathaway held
some certain place with me, that I could never spare him from ;
that he answered, as he had done during my childhood, one
great need for me ; he gave me simple rest, the rest of per-
fect reliance.
Sometimes I thought if I onh r could have given him a little
more, when he asked it, what a sure, peaceful, tenderly-cared-
318 HITHERTO:
for life mine would have been to its very end, with him. How
happy some other woman, just a little different from me, could
be at Broadfields.
And then I wondered, whether, in such case, the old friend-
ship would still be there for me. It is hard for a woman,
and from the way of the world such alternative not sel-
dom comes to her, when she must either marry or lose a
man ; take him for a husband, or lose him for a friend, practi-
cally ; losing all the near opportunities of friendship.
If it were Hope, but what if it should not be she ? What
if some stranger were to come there all at once, caring for
none of us? I thought I should be jealous of such a love
as that in Richard. Jealous with that quiet, wonted home
side of my heart, as I had been with the more restless, asking
part of me, of Augusta Hare.
I think I understood myself less and less in those days.
It seemed as if there were capacity in me for two separate,
utterly distinct and different lives ; that I might live either,
if the other were never touched or awakened ; but what was I
to do between thcmbqth? Between the- .two sides of me that
could not be both lived out ?
Mr. and Mrs. Grandon Cope were at home' for a little while
in the early summer ; then they went away to the White
Mountains, and to Niagara. Whenever I saw Augusta, she
was as kind as ever ; but the indescribable change of marriage
had come over her ; she was Mrs. Grandon Cope. Her life
their lives taking up their own, had left me out, as it were,
and further off. Safer, so ; I was not near enough to be
troubled ; it had only been when I stood, for a little, close
upon some beautiful, vague possibilities, that might gather
to vital certaint3 r , and make my world, that I had been in the
chaotic pain. The certainty had gathered itself, and it was
not mine ; it rolled away upon its own bright orbit that seldom
intersected mine, and left me to a kind of uncreated stillness
for a time ; the elements of my fate yet waited.
I never cried for far-off and impossible things ; I reacted
quickly from all acute disappointment, as far at least as a
passive dreariness. Because I was capable of too keen suf-
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 319
fering, if once I let myself begin to suffer. I wondered, in
those days, how people gave themselves up to pain and grief;
it seemed to me it could be only in the shallows of misery ; in
the deep sea, one must either sink or swim.
Aunt Ildy had a quilt to be made ; she had saved some
woollen strips, too, for braided mats ; that took us all out one
day to the Polisher girlses.
It was August now ; it was sultry and close in the town ;
out here, in this wide, rolling sea of green, among these little
hills like softly rounded waves fixed at their most beautiful
heaving, there was a wider breath and a wonderful sweet-
ness. The dry, perfumy air, full of the woods and pastures ;
the notes of birds, not crowded into a single orchard,
hemmed about with highways and human noise, but answering
each other from green, distant depths that seemed infinite
every way ; the high sun in a great, pure sky that you could
see from level rim to rim of the far-reaching woodland undu-
lations, it was as lovely, and as different from all else, as
ever.
I had thought of the Polisher girls and their home, instinct-
ively, last year, when I felt as if I wanted a place to run to.
I had never forgotten the peculiar outstretch and relief of
that still, wide, verdant horizon, or the quaint, homely charm
of the old house. It was more than a change of place and
outlook to come there; it was going back in time; taking
refuge in a generation passed away into its peace ; getting
behind one's self and one's perplexities, into the years when
they were not born.
U I wish I could stay here a week !" I exclaimed, impul-
sively, standing with Aunt Ildy on the threshold.
" You can as well as not," said Lodemy Polisher, with
blithe alacrity. " Why won't you, now ? "
" Anstiss Dolbeare ! " said my aunt, with two-syllabled
awfulness. " That is just like 3*011 ! I am amazed ! "
She was so awful, that her little inconsistency escaped her
own notice.
"I did not mean to invite myself," I answered. "I only
meant how very, very pleasant it was."
320 HITHERTO :
" "Why didn't you just say, then," said Miss Clrism, with
grand monotonous deliberation, " how very, veiy pleasant it
was? Only other folks can see it, without your telling."
Miss Chism was all Chisin when the proprieties were in-
vaded. Little, easy, social freedoms were what she could not
tolerate.
Nevertheless, it came to our spending a da}^ there, a week
or two later ; a long August day, that ended I shall put
down in its place how it ended ; the beginning and the going
on are very pleasant to remember ; and how good it is that
both ends of a day, or a year, never do come together ; no,
nor both ends, nor any confusing, counteracting points of a
lifetime !
Richard Hathaway brought us the invitation. One of the
Polisher girls had been over, to bring Martha a basket of such
huckleberries as came*from nowhere but the wild pastures
back of their little farmstead, among the green billows of that
beautiful, solitary country-side.
" As big as green grapes, every one of 'em," Lodemy said ;
not specifying at what stage of the grape growth, but probably
the contemporary. Black and shining with rich, distending
juice ; firm and perfect ; it was such a pleasure to plunge one's
hand deep into the full basket, and to eat them out of one's
palm ; new wine of the summer, in new skins, fern-flavored,
aromatic, one swallowed from their sweet, crushed globe*.
Lodemy, and all of them, wanted us, Hope and me, to
come out and spend the da}^ and gather for ourselves, to bring
home ; and the quilt, also, would be ready. Next Thursday,
would we ? Come bright and early, and do our picking before
the sun got hot.
What a way we have of saying that, as if the great Glory
gathered radiance and intensity as we wheel our little merid-
ian toward him ! Even so we talk also of the Love that
waits and burns in heaven for our slow 'turning !
Aunt Ildy would be glad of the berries ; we were glad of the
picking. So we had the horse and wagon, and drove our-
selves over, on the Thursday, stopping at the Farm T vit1i a
message for Martha, and getting a pleasant word with Rich-
A STOUT OF YESTZnn.lYS. 321
ard, standing in his white shirt-sleeves by the gate. lie walked
up from his meadow-haying when he saw ns coining round the
bend, and brought in his hand a bunch of splendid scarlet
cardinals.
They were as becoming to him as 'they could be to a woman,
as he stood there in his fresh white linen, somehow Rich-
ard Hathaway had a marvellous way of keeping himself un-
spotted, even in his homeliest labors, his hands crossed,
as he rested his arms lightly on the gate-rail, the long,
brilliant, plumy spikes slanting across his sleeve, his brown,
handsome face with the summer glow in it, and the dark hair
all in a summer toss about his temples under the deep-brimmed
straw hat.
He gave- the flowers to me, when we started on again.
Richard always had a way of bringing flowers to me, he had
it with his mother, too, flowers of the first finding; violets,
or roses, or the midsummer magnificence of these. They came
with a quiet little tenderness about them, as of a thought had
of us in the still, pleasant places where he met their beauti-
ful surprise. It was one of the things that touched me very
much in the ways of Richard Hathaway ; it touched me more
now, that he had not changed or forgotten it with me, for all
that had come and gone. It is so good to have a friend in the
world.
It was eight o'clock when we reached the Polisher girlses.
Already there was hardly a breath in the still, sultry air.
There had been this still, intense weather, not a drop of
rain falling, only the heavy night-dews keeping things alive,
for two or three weeks. The wayside shrubs were dust}' ;
the brooks ran low in their pebbly channels ; out there, though,
was the same green depth, sheltered in its own close growth,
and fed by unseen, numberless springs. Up on the slopes,
against the southerly sun, stood the high-huckleberry-bashes
and the tall sweet-ferns, crowding the short, crisp swards.
Miss Remember stood in the door-way, in a thin, old-
fashioned lawn gown, with a pattern of slender, long-
branched, briery vines running widely over it : cool and soft
with many summers' wear. Miss .Submit looked over her
21
322 HITHERTO:
shoulder in a fine-striped lilac gingham ; and Demie and
Frasie came hastening from the back door, Avhere on their
dear, beautiful stoop, doubtless they had been shelling
beans, less imaginary, for dinner.
Demie's calico had little brown thistles on it, and Frasie's
pale pink pinks. They were made with loose front breadths,
in a fashion of ever so long ago, with bishop's sleeves, and
were tied round the waist with strings of the same, fastened
in bow-knots in front. Frasie's had three more bows at long
intervals down before, tying the open gown together over a
white dimity petticoat. These two alwaj-s dressed a little
younger than the others, and Frasie was the most " tasty,"
they all acknowledged, of the four. So she had prescriptive
right to the three little extra calico bows.
All their robes were worn to delicate thinness with age and
much care and many foldings ; such things, when you do see
them nowadays, come out with a more especial fitness and
reminding ; they have seen so much just such hot weather
before ; they have been consecrated to it, and used for nothing
else. They are like flags on the Fourth of July ; they are put
on with a touch and appropriation of personal importance,
in the observance of this grand achieving and climax of the
year. People are alwaj's a little proud, somehow, of very hot
weather. One's planet one's own part of it, at least is
doing her utmost.
We went out with Lodemy and Frasie to the little green.
They gave us low, splint-bottomed chairs, out on the grass,
and Hope and I fell to work with them at finishing the bean-
podding.
" Ifc is so nice out here," said Hope.
She remembered all the fancies that had grown so real to
them, and she commended in her words the whole pleasant-
ness they sat in, that they had builded round them. It was
there, to her, as much as to them. Hope did not wait, any
more than they, for carpenter's work.
It was nice, however, presently and positively. For myself
I hardly knew what they wanted the stoop for. The green-
sward was lovely, and the sun got round away from it early
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 323
in the day, and you could sit there looking off into the bosom
of pine shadows, and from brow to brow of the gently rising
and dipping land.
" I most wish we'd had flat trellises instead of round posts,"
said Frasie. " But we can't alter 'em now, and they don't
take up much room."
They certainly did not ; though the "girls" had planted
actual morning glories and Madeira vines in round plats just
where the porch outline and the supporte would have been.
These climbed up rough poles, set for them as for garden
vines ; and from the tops were drawn some strings and wires
up to the chamber windows.
" I wasn't going to have folks walking right straight though
our columes, at any rate, as if they were ghosts," said Lo-
demy. " I couldn't stand that, it nettled me so."
" 'Member says it's clear nonsense ; she thinks we're two
great babies ; and we don't tell her half," said Frasie.
"Babies never do," said Hope. Hope had great faith in
what babies might tell if they would.
" We couldn't if we tried t " said Lodemy. " We can't tell
half to ourselves. Clear nonsense is a great plenty. There's
nothing to stop you, you know."
" Why, clear non-sense is a beautiful thing ! " exclaimed
Hope. " I've just noticed what it really means. Clear non-
sense is just what heaven is made of! "
" Frasie would have grape-vines on this west side," said
Lodemy ; " but they keep out the sunset. Grape-vines grow so
all-over, in ten years, you see. And it's ten years and more,
since we first planned it out."
Now there was no grape-vine on the west' side, only an old
settee, on which Lodemy and Frasie Avere now sitting, with
their heels upon the rung, and their tin pans in their laps.
This, however, kept people from " walking through," and
defined their idea.
" I should trim it away," said Hope. " I should cut out a
great, wide, arched window, and let the sunset in."
" Why, yes, indeed ! " cried Frasie. " Why ever didn't you
think of that, Lodemy, instead of always blaming me?"
324 HITHERTO:
"Well, there now! Sure enough! So I will!" And
Loderny Polisher did half spring off her seat, and spill over her
beans into the grass, as if she were going instantty for shears.
She sat down again, however, and shelled away in a very busy
silence, during which I could almost hear the clip of the
blades, so sure was f that .the grape-branches were coming
down, in that " clear nonsense" realm where these Polisher
girls wrought out so much.
" I do wish 'Member would have tea out here to-night.
When she and Mittie are away, Frasie and I always do. But
that's hardly ever moi'e than once a month, you see, sewing-
meeting days ; and that only makes three or four chances in a
summer."
That was the first thing Lodemy said, after her silence.
Plainly, she wanted to try how the sunset would seem, now
that it was let in. I suppose she had ignored its beauty, from
this place, consistently and conscientiously, for years. Now,
she could fairly look it in the glorious face again.
Submit came out, just as we were gathering up the last
stray bean-pods into the pan.
" 'Member says we ought to be going," she said.
Submit always played second part to Remember, all through
the family econou.^. How they ever missed her appropriate
diminutive, and came to use the second syllable of her name
ins Lead, occurred to puzzle me already. From this day forth,
she was always " Sub" to me, and I found it a difficult delib-
eration to put the " Miss" and the " mit " at either end when
I spoke to her.
" And she wants to know if you've got barks enough? " she
added. *
Lodemy answered by going to a deep drawer in a high
mahogany chest, resplendent with many pendent brass han-
dles, which filled up one end of the narrow room that opened
upon the " stoop," and producing thence, one after another,
five " barks " and a little deep, long-handled basket. The
barks were quart measures, made of white birch, neatly
sewed into the ordinary shape, and provided with loops at
the top, through which a string was passed, to tie it round
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 325
the waist in picking, tjjat both hands might be left free for the
bushes. Each sister had her own particular bark, and there
was one over for company. Lodemy lent me hers, and took
the little basket.
Two large peck-baskets, which we were to bring home full,
completed the equipment. The uniform of the party con-
sisted of sun-bonnets, calico tunnels, framed on stiff strips of
pasteboard of precisely equal width, and capable of being
folded flat, to put away, or of having their bones drawn, for
the washing and starching process. There were plenty of
these, for they alwaj^s made one when they had a remnant of
calico of the right size ; they were " so handy." Into their
farther ends we dropped our heads ; after which we could only
look at each other by carefully bringing two cylinders in line,
and waiting a second or so to accustom our eyes to the depth,
and then presently, a face could be discerned, exactly fitted
in, at the bottom of either. The advantage was that the all-
seeing sun himself could no more easily get at us, hence,
" sun-bonnets." We saw Nature in scraps ; like a great pic-
ture looked at piecemeal through a tin tube ; which of course
brought out and intensified what we did look at, very much
indeed.
Oh, how sweet it was among the huckleberry-bushes ! How
the ferns sent up their spiciness from under our feet and
against our garments, as we pressed through them ! And how
dry the mossy turf was, and warm with the long-lying sun !
How the rich black globes rolled from our fingers' ends, at the
merest touch, into our suspended barks ! There would be no
need of stemming afterwards ; we kept them clean as we went
along.
Remember picked severely ; never eating one. That was the
way she went through her life, laying up all her joy for a pie
that was to be baked by and by. Submit did as she did ;
Lodemy and Frasie took a little of theirs as they went along.
So did Hope. She ate more, and gathered more, than any of
us. She kept time with Mittie and 'Member in pouring into
the big basket ; bark for bark she brought in ; yet her pretty
lips were all purple-stained with their sweet present pleasure.
326 HITHERTO:
I worked in company with the younger Polisher girls ; we
did not fill up so quickly. I could not keep still and satisfied
enough ; it was too often " over there " with me ; I lost time
in struggling from bush to bush. Hope always found a good
place, and alwaj-s got all there was ; she was never in a hurry
to look for more ; she had scarcely shifted her position three
yards since she began. She kept more cool and comfortable
than we did too ; she found little sitting and kneeling places
under the high, loaded bushes, and just coaxed down, with
easy touches, her fingers playing all about among the stems,
the ready fruit into her bark.
" How could I help it? It was all right there," she would
say, when we wondered at her full measure.
I read lessons, that day, out in the sweet-smelling pasture,
lessons over again that I had read before.
It grew stiller and stiller. There was a dim, hot haze in the
sky. The sun climbed up, and up, and the earth lay breath-
less under his glory.
We kept in the edge of the pasture, near the black-green
shade of the pines. A little spring trickled patiently just
within our hearing.
" That is exactly behind my house," whispered Frasie, fur-
tively. ".It never fails. It's living water. My dairy's
there ; and I've a cream-colored cow that gives fifteen quarts
of milk."
" There's a little brook runs down by my garden," said
Loderny. "And there are lilies and water-cresses."
" We shall have thunder this afternoon," said 'Member,
coming over to us. " See those brassy heads, low down in
the south. When the wind comes, they'll blow up. Then
the air'll be cooler."
" It's awful now," said Lodemy ; and she pushed back her
sun-bonnet, and showed a face that, as to the mouth, was
violet-black with huckleberry-juice, and as to the rest was
royal purple.
" Lodemy Polisher ! " cried 'Member. " You set right still
where you are, and don't stir another- inch till you cool off!
You'll have arrysippleous just as true as you're a born child I"
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 327
Then she went round from one to another, making observa-
tions down each calico well, finding the truth at the bottom,
in various shades of illustration, that it was growing far too
hot to pick huckleberries any longer.
" Set down and rest, every one of you," she commanded ;
and Submit went down instantly, just where she was, in a flat,
sunny space, full in the broil.
" Back here, Mittie, under the trees ! Are you crazed and
possessed?" cried Kemember, marshalling and ordering as
she might have done when they went huckleberrying fifty
years before, and the younger ones obeying ; till she got us all
into the shade, where we leaned ourselves upon the turfy
knolls that curved themselves for. luxurious rest all up the
easy slope, and listened to the hot, shrill whirr of the locust,
and the cool little drip of the spring.
We took little naps there, every one of us ; not all at once,
or confessedly ; but between times ; each one in turn waking
up enough to speak, and to keep up the general pretence of
consciousness by a lazy straggle of talk. Then, after a while,
Lodemy's face having subsided to its normal mode color, we
took up the peck-baskets between us, and straggled slowly
home.
How nice the dinner was in the shady back room ! Only a
tea-dinner ; the beans we had shelled mixed into delicious
succotash with the sweetest corn and new churned butter ;
huckleberry pies, of 3 7 esterday's gathering and baking, made
in deep dishes, with inverted teacups to hold the rich, splen-
did colored syrup ; buttermilk bread, toothsome and tender,
golden pound-cake, and crisp brown doughnuts, and creamy
sage-cheese, and fragrant tea, drawn in the time-honored
black earthen teapot that alone draws perfect tea.
It grew cooler while we ate ; the wind began to sigh up
from the south, and a shade to come over the sky. The
locusts left off their rattle, as if they expected something else
to speak. Once or twice there was a faint, far-off thrill of
thunder.
Miss Remember went out to the front door when we got
up from table. Away out over the woodlands, the trees
328 HITHERTO :
were turning up white undersides of leaves to the asking air.
There was a bank of magnificent clouds in the south, defi-
nitely formed now, with great curling tops.
u The thunder-heads are rising," said Remember, coming in.
" We get pretty much the heft of the storms, out here
among the rocks," said Loclemy. " All under that huckle-
berry lot is clear granite ledge ; and granite draws the light-
ning. We're high up, too. There's nothing but Pitch Hill
and Red Rock, that's any higher, for ten miles round."
"What do you talk that way for, Demie, before the chil-
dren? Anstiss' face is as white as a sheet, now. The
shower'll go round, just as like as not."
I tried not to mind ; perhaps the shower would go round ;
but I felt my face pale, and the sick thrill running through
heart and nerves that thunder in the air always gave me. I
tried to think of the little birds in their nests, and of how
man}' safe places the great clouds would sweep over and leave
green, untouched. But all my life long I should never quite
overgrow the horror that came so close to me out of the
blackness and blaze, that night, outside the Copes' shut door.
We went upstairs. The Polisher girls were used to a little
nap after dinner. The two large, opposite front rooms were
open across to each other. Hope went into the elder ladies'
apartment ; they were going to teach her the shell-pattern for
knitting. Miss Frasie took me with her ; brought out of a
dark corner cupboard some volumes of " Persuasion " and
" Northanger Abbey," and put me into the great white easy-
chair to read.
Then she folded down the smooth bedquilt, laid an old
shawl across the lower end for their feet, turned up the night
side of the pillows, and she and Demie prepared to mount.
This they had to do by agreement, and with military preci-
sion, so as not to " roll " the bed.
First, they got crickets, upon which they stood at either
side. Then, with exact calculation, each put a foot up, into
the very spot where it was to stay ; Miss Demie her right
foot, Miss Frasie her left ; then with a grasp of the bedposts
they swung themselves up, right and left face, the nice
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 329
point here being not to bump their heads as they met aloft;
and then they sat, and finally reclined, eveiything turning out
with the marvellous precision that could only come of per-
fect plan and long usage. Upon which, each sister said
" There ! " with a satisfied breath of accomplishment and giving
up, which was a part of the performance and a beginning of
repose. I suppose they had done just so for forty years.
Something in the idea of this, beside the funniness, diverted
my nervousness, and gave me that sort of unreasoning confi-
dence which we pick up against our fears in things that have
been just so for ever so long. It had probably rained and
lightened many a summer afternoon when they had as calmly
and regularly done this ; they had had their nap, the storm
had poured itself out and cleared awaj^, and they had got up
unharmed and gone down and made tea.
Also there was a drifting of clouds along the horizon, and
a sunbreak overhead, which at this moment encouraged my
faith in the possibilit} r that the showers would "go about."
About, to somebody else perhaps, as afraid of them as I.
Over the round world the tempests must break somewhere.
I even took courage to go across into Miss Remember's
room before they all quite quieted down, to beg a set of knit-
ting-needles and to look at Hope's stitch. "We meant to
make a quilt at our odd minutes, as a birthday present for
Aunt Ildy. Hope had finished a shell, and lent it to me for a
pattern. I went softly back to my easy-chair, and the whole
house hushed up.
There was a great hush out of doors, too. The brief south-
,erly stir in the air was over. Only some uufelt upper current
swayed the drifting clouds, whose masses crept slowly higher
up over the heaven. I would not look to see how high they
were. The sun went in, and a shadow lay on everything.
But that there does when a fleece of a hand's breadth crosses
its disk.
I knitted back and forth, three purl and three plain,
making my wideuings at the corners.
Miss Lodemy and Miss Frasie were asleep, their feet rest-
ing in the selfsame hollows they had made in climbing up ;
330 HITHEZTO:
just one dint in each pillow under the head that had not
moved ; when they got up there would be two perfect prints
of human figures, as of two fossils in a rock.
The far-off white tops of the woods were bending this way.
The wind was coming up again.
Then pale shivers ran along the tall grass, swaying in its
turn.
It grew darker and darker.
A faint gleam I could hardly tell whether it were a sen-
sation in my eyes only, or a flickering about my needles
came and went. It was just long enough to feel.
Is there anything more like spirit than the waking out of
the slumbering air of this shining mystery ?
Thunder muttered low. It was still far off, apparently.
But how close the darkness grew !
A flash came, by and by, quite golden and distinct. It
seemed to fling its pennon across me, through the room, and
seize it back 'again, into the murk without.
I threw my needles under the bed.
Still Hope said nothing, and nobody moved. I would try
not to be childish. As I thought this, came the challenge of
the thunder, uttering in tone what had been telegraphed in
light. Heavy, turning itself in great globes of sound along
the sky, these bursting and pouring out a hurtling of
minor, sharper crashes, like canister shot.
Then I stood up, noiselessly, on my feet. Still the
Polisher girls slept on.
I never saw a clay-darkness like that which gathered then.
It seemed to be let down upon us, fold upon fold. It settled
like a weight upon the house-top. It was like a pall across
the chimney^
Then I saw what I have never seen before or since.
The air grew incandescent.
. Little crackles of fire sprang out in the gloom of the room.
They shot and hissed here and there.
Not the noise, for as yet there had been but that first
peal, but the presence, waked them. The Polisher girls sat
upright on the bed. When they moved, when I flung my-
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 331
self in terror toward them,- it was as if the stir struck out
the electric particles afresh from the overcharge about us.
Between our faces sparkled the scintillations.
We were in the very focus of the storm.
There came a blue blaze, and a rending of thunder. A
long, tearing, hurling, reverberating crash, as if hills were
split and flung apart. The rain poured down.
We were all in a pale huddle in the little passage between
the rooms. How we all got there we hardty knew. And
still, among us, hissed and snapped the little fiery atoms with
which the atmosphere was all alive.
" Come in here ! " cried Miss Remember, and dragged who-
ever was nearest her. We hustled down, over the stair-head,
into the dark, middle room. Hope pulled out the bedstead
from the wall, and we six women heaped ourselves upon it.
It was better here, where it was always dark, than out there
where the awful murk had come upon us.
Over our heads, under our feet, beside us, or every-
where, was that shock and boom and multiplied fulminant
crash ?
Where was the lightning ? We saw nothing.
No blaze ; but from the height above our heads to the deep
beneath, one terrible outburst and downburst ; one unspeak-
able plunging blast of destruction.
Then smoke, the house full ; and a stifle of sulphur.
We were struck. Yet we were all alive.
Was the house on fire ? Should we be driven out into the
storm ? Where would the flame burst out ?
We could only wait, paralyzed.
Still the pouring smoke ; the sickening sulphurous smell,
and the taint of some burned woollen thing or other. A dif-
ferent smell of burning, beside, burned plaster. We could
not tell what it all was then. We only sat and trembled, and
prayed, without any words.
For the tempest raged on ; and we were still in its midst.
Great purple streams oceans of flame filled the living
air, and flashed through and through around us. Heaven and
332 HITHERTO :
earth were overflowed with livid light, and resonant with
ceaseless and tremendous concussions.
We saw the small, terrible coruscations no more. We forgot
to be comforted with that, or to think that the awful equilib-
rium was perhaps, for us, regained.
We cowered and wondered whether God could mean to
make us die, and not have taken us in that first fearful
threatening and close-coming of his power.
Still we supposed the house must be burning, somewhere.
Smouldering slowly, perhaps, in some closet, or between the
walls, or in some pile of quilts or clothing in that garret
bej-ond us, where the lightning, doubtless, had passed through.
Go and look ? Try to put it out, if it were there ?
We dared not, we could not move. All one blaze from
end to end, through the little four-paned gable windows, was
that usually dim, rambling space nnder the low rafters, when-
ever we lifted our eyes. Go there, through God's fierce fires
of heaven, to look for some stray spark they might have
kindled among poor rags or timbers ? We thought as little
of what might be left for to-morrow of house or raiment, as we
should think among the melting elements of the Judgment
Day.
Only one earthly thing I did think of, crouching there, mute,
in the awfulness ; it was the one thing of earth that does not
fall away worthless, with its plans and its knowledges, among
the fires. I thought of the one best love that earth had given
me. The soul that had an inmost thought for me drew near
me then. I thought of Richard Hathaway. How sorry he
would be if he knew ! How he would defend and comfort me
if he could !
I scarcely thought of the storm as reaching him also ; as
holding a wide countryside under its cloud and flame and ter-
ror. It seemed as if it were only right here, over our heads ;
filling and rending this old, lonely house.
Sometimes there would be a little ceasing of the lightning ;
a little dying away and retreating of the thunder ; a little
slow hushing of the fiercely dashing rain. And then we could
tell "whether the daylight were beginning to come back or not.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 333
"Does it lift a little? I think I see more light upon the
wall."
And Hope would say, " It must be lifting somewhere, you
know. Somewhere west there is sunshine now; other
people are in it. "We shall be there too."
And then the horrible blackness would roll over again, the
faint day-gleam on the wall was lost, and there were only the
leap of the lightning, and the tumultuous roar of the thunder,
all about us, as they had been before.
Cloud after cloud ; hour after hour ; the storms lasted all
through the afternoon. Cramped in every limb, we lay and
clung together. Hope was quietest ; she never clutched or
grasped, as we did. When she spoke, her voice was so low
and deep that it seemed to come from some far, solemn shelter
away clown beneath God's hand.
We got used to our terror. We bore it as people bear long
pain. The sharpness of it died away. It seemed to me that
I almost forgot what it was ever to have felt safe and careless ;
ever to have gone out and in under the sky and seen it blue
and sweet. Was all this force and fury in it, slumbering,
always ? Might a bolt come down through the happy air, any
time?
Did we go out there, among those wild pastures and gray,
lightning-drawing rocks only this morning, picking pleasant
fruits ?
Was that little patient spring trickling there yet, among
the pines?
Suddenly, after a burst that rattled from rim to rim of the
horizon, a new sound came to us in the instant of comparative
stillness ; new as if we had never heard it before. A very
small, slender sound ; only the strike of a horse's hoofs, gal-
loping over gravel, and then their deadened thud upon the wet
sod.
" Hallo ! "
"Oh, thank God ! Richard ! "
He had jumped off, thrown his horse's bridle round a post,
and let himself in. I met him on the stairs.
As he came up, and I went down, in that mere moment
334 HITHERTO :
of our meeting, he divined the whole. The story of all those
dreadful three hours was in my white face, in my excited ges-
ture toward him as toward a refuge, in that sickening, sulphur-
mingled smell of burned hair and plaster and woollen, still
pervading the house. From the very front and presence of
death I came to him, and he knew it.
"Nansie?" he said, tenderly, anxiously, eagerly, and
reached forward his arms toward me.
I let myself drop into them as into a safety. I was held
against the heart that I had felt in the darkness. And then
he put his face to mine, and kissed me.
The. light was broadening on the wall. That last long, wide,
rattling roll was the retreat of the tempest.
" It is all bright in the west," said Richard. " It is all over."
How glad his voice sounded !
Then I began to shiver and tremble. I had been all tense
with fear before. Now my teeth chattered, and I could not
speak.
He brought me up among them all, into Miss Remember' s
room ; where the yellow light from the peaceful west came in.
He had his arm still about me.
" Why, I told you so ! " said Hope. And the deep, low
tone had mounted suddenly to something wonderful in its
clearness. It was like an angel speaking down from God,
now, out of the stilled heaven.
" I told you there was sunshine somewhere, and we should
come to it again ! "
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 335
CHAPTER XXVI.
DOWN THE PINE LANE.
HE went all through the house with us.
Awed, and shrinking, we ventured into room after room,
where the terrible presence had been.
It had been behind, beneath us ; everywhere, almost, but in
that dark, central spot where we had taken refuge.
The bolt had seized the east chimney, where the flue was
warm from the kitchen fire. On its top it had parted, sending
one stream down inside, sweeping clean with its dreadful rush
every particle of soot and ashes, covering the floors below
with their forced-out mass, and filling the house with smoke.
It had torn up the kitchen hearth, hurling the bricks across
the room, splintered the floor, and plunged into the cellar
beneath ; finding a point and passage for its leap, doubtless,
in the position of an old, heavy iron bar, which had stood
leaning against the wall below since they could hardly remem-
ber when, and was now half buried, obliquely, in the earth,
some yards away.
Upstairs, in the long garret-room, a rent in the roof and a
split rafter, close beside the chimney, showed where the other
portion of the fluid had come in. Just behind Lodemy's bed-
head it was ; and following some great nail, or clamp, or
bolt, a third current had torn through, caught the metal-rod
around the high old-fashioned frame, on which its draperies
had some time run, fused them in its fiery grasp, and flung
them in molten drops all down upon blankets, coverlit, and
carpet, burning holes, in every one of which a perfect shot was
buried. This was the smell of woollen that had assailed us.
The high, gilt, ornamented mirror-frame was blackened, and
336 HITHERTO :
beside it was torn plaster, and outside a clapboard burst for-
ward near a waterspout that ran down the corner to the
ground. This, split, and detached from its fastenings, told
the rest.
Within the garret was a most strange confusion. As if the
fearful spirit had found itself penned in, and had dashed itself
hither and thither in mad, instantaneous search and trial for
an outlet ; seizing and flinging pell-mell one thing after an-
other that failed it, in its grasp after that which should suffice
to lead it through.
An old, disabled clock was disembowelled of its machinery ;
its springs and wheels twisted, melted, and scattered ; its
pendulum found sticking by its slender point straight upright
in the floor. A bundle of light stair-rods was dispersed and
driven in every direction, no two lay together ; some had gone
through the windows, out of doors.
Quite across t the building from its point of entrance, the
mass of the fluid had forced its way through beams and board-
ing, and found conduct by a new leaden pipe down into the
water-butt by the kitchen door. Little streams seemed to
have wandered and escaped here and there.
The wires over the girls' " stoop," on which the greenery
grew, were destroyed. The poles and vines were prostrate ;
scorched. The lis-htnina: had come even there, and broken
o o
down their dream.
Frasie cried when she saw it. It was the worst of all.
" They should never know" she said. " They could never
tell what was left."
Other mischief might be traced and mended. But how
could they mend their old, long fantasy, that had grown so
clear and beautiful with years?
Miss Frasie trembled and cried more and more. She
was delicate, poor old lady, and sensitive, as imaginative per-
sons always are ; and the shock to her nerves had been very
serious. Remember gave her aromatic hartshorn, and told
her to behave ; whereupon she stopped crying, and began to
giggle, childishly. This was worse. *
" There ! do exactly as you're a mind to," said Remember,
A STOnJ OF YESTERDAYS. 337
" and have it out ; then you'll feel better. Only if you can't
stop, keep taking the hartshorn."
" Now, see here," said Richard, coming in where we were
gathered round her. " You've just all got to come over to
the Farm and stay to-night, and as much longer as you will.
You can't get tea nor breakfast here, even saying you were
fit to, as you aint. That kitchen chimney has got to be looked
to before you. build a fire in it. Can you keep comfortable
while I ride home, and bring back Jabez and a wagon ? "
Only Richard would have thought of that ; that neither
Hope nor I ought to have the care of driving ; that we must
be taken care of to-night in all things. I think he had found
too, that the horse, standing fastened in the barn through all
the tempest, had had nerves as well as we, and was hardly in
fit condition for a nervous woman's hands.
So he left us, to bring back Putterkoo and Jabez. After he
had gone, we stayed still in the room where we were, the lit-
tle oblong backroom opening on the " stoop." I think they all
had the same feeling that I had ; of something weird and
ghostty that had been through the house ; that somehow
seemed like an uncanny presence still.
It grew dusk ; the sun was down. There were tall old lilac-
bushes close to the windows of this room, reaching away up
to the very eaves. The shadows gathered quickly ; we sat
closer together.
" Hadn't we better be getting our things on?" suggested
Remember. " Men-folks don't like to wait."
How did she know about men-folks ? Just as we know about
flavors that we never tasted, yet can say " This, or that, is
like them."
But to think of Remember Polisher asking anybody, " Hadn't
we better ? " Or even thinking of a thing that perhaps had
better be done, without springing right up to do it ! Yet
'Member sat on, and nobody answered. Nobody thought we
had better, until Richard should come again.
I saw it twice before I said anj'thing. At first I supposed
my eyes were strained with all the glare and fright, and that
I saw it as a sort of spectrum. But it came a third time, aiid
22
838 BITHERTO: .
at the same moment Lodemy and I spoke out, involuntarily,
"What was that?"
It was only a pale blue tremble in the air ; like the shim-
mering of heat, but with this color added. It quivered for an
instant, and melted out. It was like a breath ; it might be
dying breath.
" Why? Do you hear anything? Are they coming?"
asked Miss Frasie, in her weak, thin, anxious voice.
" I guess not," said Hope. " Perhaps something went by,
over on the road."
She shook her head, behind Miss Frasie, as she spoke. I
knew by her look that she had seen what we did. But Miss
Frasie must not be startled any more.
It happened again and again, however, while we waited. I
breathed shorter and shorter, longing for Richard to come.
Something rushed through my brain with an undefined, igno-
rant suggestion, one word, that I had picked up some time ;
I could not tell where, or how.
" After-dap"
Was there such a thing ? Might there be some force, slum-
bering, unappeased, unequalized still, around us, under our
feet? Might there be, after long interval, some sudden out-
break, some final, harmonizing discharge through this haunted
air, these dislocated affinities?
I should have doubted to this day, perhaps, if we really did
see it, only that after Richard came, and began to help make
fast the house for leaving, Hope and he and I were all together
by a doorway, when it came again. Faint, flickering, just
visible, like a licking flame, it ran down along the door-frame,
fading as it went.
"Did you see?"
We both turned to Richard, asking him.
" Yes. It's strange. But then it's all strange. It's coming
round right, I suppose. Whatever it is, it's working off.
There's alwa}-s a way for everything, and it isn't our lookout,
you sec. Now wrap up ; and let's be off."
He hurried us away. He would not let us stop to watch, or
think, or talk.
A STORT OF YESTERDAYS. 839
Martha had a wonderful tea for us that night ; and it was
wonderful to sit down to it, and eat and drink, as if we had
not seen into the depths, and felt the awful touch of the powers
of the air, and been almost out of the body and face to face
with God.
Yet we were left to live here on this earth, and not a hair of our
heads had been breathed upon, and quiet days were to be
again for us, great sunrises and glorious sunsets, with no
terror in their flames ; and bread was to be sweet and needful,
and fruits juicy, and common living among friends pleasant,
as it had been, in old, small, simple ways.
To see Martha bring the little old, black teapot in, to fill up
the tall china one, made me feel braver again, I knew not
how. It was the reassurance that there could still be little
black teapots, and things like them, and the use of them, in
the world. The same world where there were lightning-draw-
ing rocks, and tempests, and great clouds coming down, and
fire rushing from the heavens forked with destruction.
Teas and breakfasts and dinners and peaceful nights of
sleep, and household work, and farming in the fields, always,
everywhere ; storms here and there onty, and once in a while.
I was quite happy again by bedtime. Very happy when
Richard stopped me at the stairfoot, behind the others, though
he had said good-night before.
" I could not help that Anstiss ; when I first came, you
know. It was just as if I had found you on the other side of
the grave. I don't count it as any difference yet
unless "
" It is yet, it is unless ! " I answered him low, hurriedly,
impetuously. " Richard, there will never be anybody like
you!"
I thought only of his strong, beautiful, sur.e love. I must
have it about me in my life. I could not turn and go away
from it again. Had not God sent it? Put it before me, once,
twice, always? Had he given me anything else? Did this
mean nothing of his will ?
" Anstiss ! Come back a minute, Austiss ! "
I turned to go back with him.
340 HITHERTO :
" No ! No ! " he said, then, in his strong, generous way.
" It shall all be till morning. Good-night Nansie ! "
He did not kiss me, though we were left all alone. He did
not even take me in his arms again. He would not claim me.
He would not take advantage of the strange excitement and
impulse of the night.
Would any other than Richard Hathaway ever have done so ?
Might I not love this man ?
It was a strange night to me. Twice in my life I have
passed other such nights, when a great peace has come after a
deep agony of experience.
I do not know which were the greater rests, the sleepings
or the wakings. They alternated all night long.
The hush and the sweetness after the storm ; the tame little
night-winds breathing in at the windows ; the gleam of the
far-up stars. The wideness of the safety and the mere point
of havoc and harm. The being back again; from glimpse and
possibilitj' and terrible nearness of doom. I rested in these
with untold, unsated content. I rested in the human love
beside me ; ready to be close beside me through all. God
forgive me if this were all selfishness. I thought it was
thankfulness and peace.
In the morning Miss Remember was herself again. She
must go back to the Ledges.
" All creation will be there, you see, as soon as it gets
round. And it's pretty well round by this time. It'll be
wuss'n lightning if I aint there. Submit, you and I'll go
along. The girls can stay if they like ; and if they think they
can get over it better here than there. But I'm for marching
right up to a thing, when it's got to be met and seen to."
So Submit and Remember went along.
Hope sat with Lodemy and Frasie, after the early morning
work was done, out by the open hall door, where the air came
by, keen and bright, from the north-west hills, " swept crystal
clear," and the little slant of sunshine at their feet, beneath
the trees, was pleasant.
Hope took up the task- of soothing poor Miss Frasie. It
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 341
was needful ; for there was real danger in the shattering of
her nerves and spirits.
The real and the ideal, which she had lived in so curiously
together, seemed jumbled in her mind into one loss and con-
fusion and pain.
" I'd got it all kind of regular and nice, you know ; I knew
just where everything was. Now, I don't know whether
there's anything. Or ever was. Do you think it was a judg-
ment, Hope ? Was it graven images ? "
" Don't you see, dear Miss Frasie, that the very things the
storm could not touch, were the things you loved so ? It was
only the signs of them that could be torn down. Your little
vines and strings and wires were only little marks put in to
keep the place, and make it seem more real ; but they were
the least real things. Why, if it had all been built in timber,
that wouldn't have been the real part. It isn't the real part
of any houses. Lightning can't strike the inside. The signs
of us, ourselves, aren't the real part of us, even. Why, it all
goes together, and there is just one comfort in it. ' For we
know, if the earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved,
we have a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.'
I never saw that before ! It has just come ! "
" Why, I don't much believe it would be wicked," Hope
went on, " to take those other words for such a meaning,
partly : ' Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where
neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves cannot
break through nor steal.' I think God gave it to you, dear
Miss Frasie, within ; what he did not see good to give you
without ; I think it is the beginning of what is laid up for yon
from the foundation ; just as we give little children a taste,
you know, and put the rest away. It isn't struck nor burned ;
it's there ! "
Nobody but Hope could have comforted her so. I think
Hope saved her "faculties," which Miss Remember was
afraid would go.
Richard came to me, very directly and simply, and asked
me if I would walk down the Pine Lane with him.
The Pine Lane really a glorious avenue ran down be-
342 HITHERTO :
bind the orchard, skirting the Great Mowing, and ended in
deep woods. It had begun with a cart-path, I suppose, up
which they brought in their logs cut in the " Back Lot."
Generations ago, the pine-trees had been left standing
some even planted in on each side, as the fields were
cleared ; and now, down to the piece of old forest whence
they still cut all their winter supplies, it was one broad,
shaded pathway, deeply carpeted with soft brown needles.
It was like the aisle of a cathedral. I walked down by
Richard's side, as I might have walked down a church to an
altar. I knew we should come back from that walk no more
two, but one.
We came out of the deep, sweet-smelling shade upon a
knoll that lay against the woods. Light broke in here. It
was like an open chancel, a great shrine, -^- with the Pres-
ence shining from above, as it came down between the cheru-
bim.
The forest around us gathered gradually. Its border was
of light growth ; birches and alders edged it like a fringe.
We looked into quiet nooks, and down the openings, of little
footpaths, across which squirrels ran, and within which were
nests of many little birds.
We sat there all alone with God and his beauty.
" It is a good place to come to after yesterday," said Rich-
ard.
I felt its calmness and sweetness good, as he knew they
would be for me. Richard was a providence for me, always.
We rested there, silently; till our whole souls and bodies
were full, in every thought and sense, of the rich and beauti-
ful peace.
"This is your lane, Anstis^," said Richard, by and by.
" We've never been here many times together ; and yet you've
been with me always."
After that there was a silence between us for a while.
" Every bit of the farm is yours in that way," he began
again. " You can't help it, whether you take it or not."
" Please don't talk about taking, Richard. It is all taking,
with me. All giving, with you."
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 343
"Will you take me, Anstiss?"
Even then he asked me to give him nothing ; only that he
might be allowed to give.
It must have been meant to be.
I turned round and put my two hands in his. Then I
dropped my face upon them, and cried.
Richard drew me up, and took me into his arms.
" I will make you as happy as the day is long," he said,
slowly, and sweetly, and solemnly.
He did not tell me, like other men, that I had made him
happy. He gave himself, utterly, like God.
How mean I feel nrpelf, remembering and writing this !
It is not good to receive all. God himself knows that, re-
quiring us to give back, even to him.
But I was very restfully, thankfully, happy.
I could do no otherwise. This love was put for me, and I
could no longer do without it. God knew. I know this day,
that he did know.
The morning grew sweeter and sweeter, in the sunniness
after the rain. We stayed there a long time.
Then we came up, through the pines, into the world again.
We had to go home before dinner, Hope and I. Aunt Ildy
would think it strange if we did not, although a message had
been sent to her last night, and she knew that we were safe,
and where.
Richard drove us in. Jabez was to come into the town,
and bring him back.
Martha stared at Richard's goings on, and goings off to-
day.
" He hasn't laid a finger to the farm," she said. " The
men are just chalking out for therselves, as they please.
'Taint his way. The thunder's turned everything, I think,
besides the milk ! "
344 HITHERTO :
CHAPTER XXVII.
ANSTISS HATHAWAY.
I WENT straight up to Aunt Ildy. She was in her room,
darning some cap-laces.
I forgot, for the moment, all about the lightning. That
was the event before the last. It was to-day's news, not yes-
terday's, that I had upon heart and lip.
" Aunt Ildy," I said, " Richard and I have made up our
minds."
Dead silence.
"What turn could any displeasure have taken, to equal
that?
She did not even lift her eyes. I saw a certain start of as-
tonishment, however, under the skin, as it were ; and then the
determination that set the lips and kept the eyelids down.
Something was not right about it ; but what could I do next ?
I stood and waited.
I could not tell her over again. I could not enlarge, or tell
more. Neither could I go away without answer or notice. I
wondered. how long it would last, and whether she could bear
it out longer than I could. I think I stood still there, before?
her, for about three minutes. It seemed five times as long.
"Well?" she said, at length, lifting her eyes severely, as
if simply wondering what I waited for.
" You heard what I said, aunt?"
She waited again.
" About Richard and me? "We have decided it."
" Umph ! Very well. Then I suppose it is decided."
Her eyes went down again.
" Richard is downstairs, aunt."
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 345
" He can't want me. There seems to be no reference to
me in the case."
She looked, for outraged dignity, like nothing less than the
United States government in a moment of defied authority or
disregarded claim.
" It used to be the fashion to consult fathers, or mothers, or
somebody, before -things were decided."
"Why, auntie, of course he wants to see you. But I came
to tell you first, myself."
Receiving no answer, and utterty at a loss as to whether
she would appear and welcome him or not, I had to go away
downstairs again to Richard.
He was in the little sitting-room, that was closed, green and
cool, against the August heat. Hope had gone to Lucretia in
the kitchen, and presently I heard her pass upstairs, to Aunt
Ilcly. Then there were questions, and answers, and talk, fast
enough. Hope was recounting, I knew, our experience at the
Ledges.
I sat down by Richard, on the hair-cloth sofa in the corner.
I was more sure than ever that he was my refuge and rest.
What should I have done if it had been any other than Rich-
ard ? He knew Aunt Ildy's ways.
" You must manage it with Aunt Ildy," I said to him.
" I've been unlucljy, and begun at the wrong end with her."
I laughed as I said it ; and then I cried a little. I could
not help it ; it seemed hard to me, in this great moment of my
life, to miss to want I knew not what. I know now.
It was mother-love. That which I had missed all my life ;
missed it so long, that half the time I knew not now what it
was I did miss. I looked for bread, and I had got a stone.
Yet Aunt Ilcly I would not forget it could be, had
been, very kind. There was love in her heart, deep down ;
sister-love, aunt-love, her variet}- of it, I suppose, too,
There are all sorts and ways of aunt-love ; of mother-love
there is but one.
Perhaps Hope did it ; perhaps Aunt Ildy meant it all the
while ; but she came down after a time, and spoke to Richard
346 HITHERTO :
very civilly. As soon as I could, I got away, and carried my
bonnet upstairs.
When I came back, she was doing everything proper and
handsome. A tray, with plates and cake and wine, as suitable
observance, stood waiting on the table ; upon my return, at a
look from Aunt Ildy, Hope handed it round. She came first
to me ; I broke a corner off a rich slice of the.sacred compound,
and took in my fingers one of the little low, round, old-fash-
ioned glasses, with a feeling of guilt at being of so much im-
portance. But I was happy ; I knew that Richard must have
made all right.
Aunt Ildy had been, for a moment, like one of our modern
street-cars, slipped off her track ; she had been hoisted on
again, and could proceed comfortably now upon the propriety-
grade.
After the little state luncheon, Richard stayed on, till it was
time for dinner, which he ate with us, without more ado.
Uncle Royle came in, with some speciality in his manner ;
he had on a fresh, white-frilled shirt ; Aunt Ildy had had him
upstairs. She, too, had put on rather a festival cap.
Uncle Royle shook hands, with a particular kindness and
dignity, with Richard. It was the right hand of family fellow-
ship ; now it was all over for the present ; we could take things
naturally.
I was glad to talk about the storm, and the Polisher girls.
I wondered what people did who were engaged, who had noth-
ing happen to them, at the time, but the engagement. I
thought an earthquake must be a gentle relief.
After all, it was a white, pleasant day in my life. I did
not like being made much of at the moment ; because I was so
ill-used to it, and have always felt it such a misdemeanor ; but
I was glad to remember it at night, and I was very grateful.
I was terribly afraid, however, of all the trouble I should
have to make for Aunt Ildy before she had done with me. I
wished I were married, and it were all well over.
Hope went, in a day or two, for a regular visit at the Pol-
isher girlses. It was her own thought. They were old, and
timid, she said, and were in such dread of more storms. They
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 347
had so much to do, too ; they ought not to be all by them-
selves, just for a while.
Hope seemed very still, somehow, since these happenings.
She was heart-glad we knew that that it was all right
between us ; it was easy to see Hope's gladness, or her pain.
She was glad, satisfied ; but somehow she slid away into a
retired tranquillity of her own. She was busy and cheerful,
always doing, but softly, as if she were almost afraid of wak-
ing something. Only that her manner was so sweet, and her
whole self so remindful of nothing that was not pretty and
poetical, she made me think, curiously, of a most homely
thing, of Aunt Ildy's way when she was threatened with a
spasm of hiccough. Right wherever she was, at the first
symptom, she would lay hold of something, grip hard, will
hard, and breathe calm and slow. If she could get over the
first minute or two, all was well ; the paroxysm would never
come ; but if it once got the better of her, she had a suffering
time. Hope seemed almost to keep her breath under, as if
some soul-spasm, which she would not have, for the moment
threatened her. Whether it were a fear and nervousness
excited in her, as in us, by the storm and its horrors, or a dread
of dreading, that was upon her, and she thus put by, I do not
know ; she seemed to put by something ; and, whatever it was,
I think it never held her. She rose more thoroughly and clear
from the influence of that time than I have ever done.
She helped the Polisher girls thi'ough with all their labors
of renovation ; she realized many little idealities of home-
adornment for ( them ; she put a new, fresh face on much that
replaced what else might have been unpleasant in its reminder
and association ; she left them cheerful, and she came home
blithe.
I was to be married in October ; there was nothing to wait
for. Nothing but my outfitting, which was all to be done.
Hope and I sat day after day by the windows in Aunt Ildy's
room, with the big band-basket full of prepared work between
us, and stitched away busily.
All the makings of the household were set on foot and
mostly accomplished in Auut Ildy's room ; everything was
348 HITHERTO :
cut out on her large bed. She herself, when she was not cut-
ting out, sat in her rocking-chair by the chimney ; in the
summer-time she put her spools and scissors on the little ledge
under the mantel ; in the winter she ranged them on the broad
corners of the Franklin stove.
I remembered the days of Margaret Edgell and her bride-
hood. I thought of the things I meant then to have if ever I
were a bride ; of my determination to be married in church
and wear a veil.
It was curious how much I gave up as unimportant, or as
not worth insisting on, now that the time had come. One
after another, by Auntlldy's decisions, or my own silence con-
cerning them, they were dropped out of the catalogue of
conditions and furnishings ; till the poetry of my bridal
surroundings was very nearty all shorn away, and only a very
substantial and prosaic provision remained.
Plenty of good towels and tablecloths, sheets and pillow-
cases, for I must not go empty-handed of these to the Farm,
though Richard was a householder already. Two good, use-
ful, dark silks, and two merinos, were my winter dresses ; a
double set of all under-garments, with extra frillings and
edgings ; two calicoes, for morning wear ; a broche shawl for the
autumn, and a purple thibet cloth pelisse, bound with silk, for
the winter ; after I had got all these, I was ashamed to ask
for white silk and tulle for wedding array. I was ashamed to
seem to take to myself any central importance ; to intimate
that my being married could be the beautiful and absorbing
thing that it was for other people ; a thing to look at and to
talk about. I never breathed a word about the veil ; I made
up my mind to be married with flowers in my hair.
Aunt Ildy bought me a fawn-colored silk, very pale and
delicate, and broad thread-lace for bosom and sleeves ; these
she said would always be useful ; the silk would turn, and
then color. I was so overwhelmed by her thought for me,
and her real liberality, that I uttered no word of preference
for maiden white.
Yet it was all just as it had been years ago ; the window
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 349
*
was high ; there was a wall in the way ; things were to - be
acquiesced in, and made to do.
I let my fancies drop ; I accepted the prose yet once more.
Behind and beyond were the fact of Richard's love, and the
poetry of the new life that was to be for me.
The Grandon Copes came home late in September. The
house at South Side was fall ; Laura and Kitty were both to
be married in the spring.
Augusta came directly to see me on her return ; she was
very well satisfied with my marriage.
" Mr. Hathaway is such a strong, genuine man," she said.
" He is sure to go steadily on in the world. Grandon has
the highest opinion of him, and of his influence in the neigh-
borhood. You'll have such a nice home, too, Nannie ; just
what you like best about you. And it will be so nice to come
there in the summer-times and take little teas with you. I
am glad your wedding is to be at once ; later I couldn't have
been with you ; and by January we shall be in Washington."
And then she gave me her wedding gift, a delicate,
superb, thread-lace scarf.
" It can be a veil, you know, if you will do me the pleas-
ure of wearing it so, and afterward a scarf, or anything, in
fact. Thread-lace is always ' handy to have in the house,' as
my dressmaker said to me once, when I couldn't quite so well
afford it, and she had made me get a yard too much at eight
dollars the yard."
She approved of my wedding dress. " It was sunshiny,"
she said. " Just the same pale sort of sunshine that I had in
my hair."
It would be lovely now, indeed, with her exquisite, mag-
nificent addition. It was Augusta's wonderful tact once more.
She had either divined from her knowledge of Aunt Ildy, or
found out from Hope, that my wedding dress was to be hand-
some and sensible only ; she threw the bridal grace over it,
transforming it into summer-sunshine and fleecy cloud.
Without interference, either ; it was a gift for afterward ; Aunt
Ildy saw especially the judiciousness Of that ; only she should
350 HITHERTO :
feel it a compliment if I changed my mind about a veil, and
wore it at my wedding.
She came down on the bright October morning, early, to lay
its frosted mist over my hair, and fasten it with flowers ; tube-
roses and jessamine, and cool, gloss}-, deep-green leaves, with
spra3 7 s of delicate vines falling and wandering away, among
its transparent folds.
It was strange how it should always fall to her to give my
life whatever touch of outer grace it got ; she came in like a
fairy godmother, laying gifts and spells upon me.
She put my very choice and fate in her own new lights, by
her ways of setting forth. She could alwa} r s put things in such
light and aspect as she would.
She made my home and future complementary to her own ;
the Farm over against South Side. She rounded the picture,
showed it in related parts, covering it with beauty and pleas-
antness.
She could have me now, again, more than ever. Marriage
woifld bring me into her sympathies. Marriage settled every-
thing ; after that, people could understand and go on.
I was married in the forenoon, in the stiff front parlor that
was hardly ever used, with its three windows looking on the
street. But Hope and Mrs. Grandon Cope had made it beau-
tiful with flowers, and had persuaded Aunt Ildy to put up
fresh, simple white muslin curtains ; and they had looped back
these with leaves and vines, and set the blinds aslant, by some
ingenious device, so that the autumn sunshine just crept in
across a pleasant shade.
I did not hear a word the minister said. I wondered, as he
ended, if I could be truly married, the solemn sentences had
gone over me so. I almost wanted to cry 'out that I had not
heard I had not thought ; to bid him say them over again.
But they said I was married. Richard was by my side ; the
strong claSp of his hand when he had made the promise was
warm about mine still ; they came up and kissed me, and con-
gratulated, and called me Mrs. Hathaway.
Then I had to cut the cake, and to have the first piece ; and
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 351
whether I ate it, or what*became of it, or what it was like, I do
not know.
There was more talk, more calling me by that new, strange
name, a moving and changing of groups, a pleasantness and
laughing, good-bys that seemed to come close upon the greet-
ings, a thinning of the room, a driving off of some carriages ;
and then Richard asked me if I were ready to go home.
There had only been cake and wine and fruit at the
wedding ; Richard had insisted upon the dinner being at the
Farm. Aunt Ildy and Uncle Royle and Hope were to ac-
company me to my new home, and see me installed there, and
then drive home quietly in the twilight.
So Richard put me, in my sunshiny silk and my white gloves,
with the soft, light lace upon my hair, into the carriage,
the state carriage of New Oxford, which bore brides to their
homes, and mourners to the graves, and we went out, in the
bright October noon, over the same pleasant country road we
had traversed hundreds of times before, yet every step of
which was new to-day. For it was the beginning of our life-
path together.
I was a bride ; the bridal veil was over my head ; it was
my husband by my side. The little children had stood at the
top of the lane to see us pass.
Was this the long romance that Margaret Edgell's bridal
day had seemed? After all, it was more like something in
the way ; it was strange, and short ; an interruption half
comprehended, a ceremony half entered into, between the
dear, old, life-grown, confiding love and need, and the coming
new and nearer life, the life that was to prove our souls ;
that was to be all there was for our two human hearts between
this day and the grave.
Home had not yet begun. It was high festival, sitting
there at the head of Richard's table, in my wedding dress,
while Martha waited.
She had put her pride into the wedding dinner, the good
Martha ; if I had been some strange, splendid lady, come
from a far place, she could not have given me more careful
honor. The honor that lay upon me was the being Richard's
352 HITHERTO:
wife. Any woman whom he had brought there would have
been the same ; and I, whom she had seen all my life, was
new and strange to her this day ; to be treated with a
strangerly deference. I was Mrs. Hathaway.
I think, at the same time, that it was not I whom she had
always wanted in that name and place. Yet Richard had
wanted me, and I had come. That was enough.
We walked up the Long Orchard after dinner. It was
beautiful, in the shade of the broad arcades, with the fruit-
ripeness among the branches and at our feet. It was beauti-
ful away off over the hills, where the rest lay. The hidden
brook sang in the autumn stillness.
We sat on a rustic bench that Richard had put there lately.
Aunt Ildy made me take up my dress carefulty. I felt
queerly, as if I were out visiting in some strange way with
her ; to go back again with her when the day was over ; above
all, that I was responsible to her if any harm befell my un-
wontedly rich attire. She was really quite splendid in her
black silk and her old English thread laces.
I cannot remember what we talked about. It was a strange,
dreamy, unreal day.
After they had gone, while they were going, and Richard
helping them off, I slipped away to Martha.
" Where are my trunks? Come help me, quick ! "
And running upstairs with her, I unlocked, not the large,
new one, which held Mrs. Hathaway's things, the unworn
wardrobe, but a little one, in which were gowns of Anstiss
Dolbeare's.
I chose a plain delaine ; and I pulled out of a box some
soft, deep-blue ribbons. I ran away with these to the little
room that had been mine in my stays at the Farm, shut my-
self in, took off my dress and veil, remembering, even then,
with the fear of Aunt Ildy before my accustomed eyes, to
shake out the silken breadths carefully across the bed, and to
fold the costly lace beside it ; and then, in a minute, I was
Anstiss Dolbeare again, in my quiet brown, tying blue rib-
bons in my hair and at my throat.
Of course Richard was looking for me. I listened at the
A STORY OP YESTERDAYS. 353
door, and heard his step in the hall. I waited till he turned,
and then ran lightly and swiftly, came up behind him, and laid
my hand in his as he- stood in the doorway.
" My little Nansie ! "
How tenderly he took me ! . How glad, how gratefully, he
looked at me !
" My little wife, in her brown dress ! "
" I wanted to get home, Richard. I have a good mind to
go and make short-cake for tea."
23
354 HITHERTO !
CHAPTER XXVIII.
UP THE RIVER.
" WE are going our bridal trip to-day, Nansie," Richard
said to me, standing with me on the broad door-stone, in the
October morning sunshine.
It was the morning after our marriage.
Red Hill was scarlet and brown, and golden, and evergreen,
before us. The elms were dropping amber in the door-yard.
In the sunshine and the air together, were rich, sweet smells
of autumn. It would be a day of life and glory, with a warm,
delicious heart of noon.
" I am going to take you where you have never been."
He could take me nowhere in the world, that da}'-, where I
had ever been before. It was all new. " The evening and the
morning were the first day."
He and Martha managed it. I knew nothing of what went
into the covered basket, or of who carried it awa}-, or whither.
Richard's hands and arms were free for me when we set off
together, walking up through the corner of the Long Orchard,
and so out into the Pine Lane.
All down the avenue it was green and still as ever. Sum-
mer was shut in here, saying her last, sweet prayers, while
autumn blazed triumphant on the hills.
We came out on the knoll. Down in the little evergreen
coverts burned fires of beauty. Vines trailed in crimson
light. Common little shrubs stood up, royally, turned into
pyramids and globes of gold. Underneath were white and
purple stars, shining evciywhere. The beds of wild aster
were filled with bloom. The barberries were hung with coral.
The bittersweet had burst all its tawny husks, and showed its
bright vermilion beads.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 355
The year had on its diadem for this our bridal time, and
all up and down its robe were jewels. The breath of a per-
fected blessing was abroad.
Richard did not say this, or any poetry, to me, as we sat
there. He was a silent man. He was only very loving and
very happy ; and he had taken me out into this perfect day,
to keep it where it was the brightest. The fine instinct and
the joy were in him ; at that moment I could do without the
words.
We walked on, down one of the little, mysterious paths that
branched into the woods. It wound, and wound, by moss
and stone, and stump, and springing water. It was carpeted
with pine needles .sometimes, and sometimes with the fallen
splendors of the maple, and was sometimes green on either
hand with the late-growing ferns. It came out at last beside
the river. We were two miles, and more, from home ; } 7 et all
this lovely woodland, clown to the river brink, was part of
Hathaway Farm. It had been larger yet ; the largest farm in
all that county ; but much of John's part had been sold. For
the rest, and for his sister's, Richard was still paying a rent ;
but he had bought in many of Mrs. Kingsdon's acres, and he
hoped to own the whole, in years to come, and keep it in the
name.
I did not see what he had brought me for, till we had come
close down. Down to where a low river-wall was built against
the bank, and long willow branches bent over and dipped into
a sheltered cove.
A little boat dark green, with stripe of white, her oars
dark-bladed, then freshly white up to the rowlocks, then dark
again for handling lay moored against the rocks.
" That is your wedding present, Nansie."
There had been an old, leaky boat upon the river, in which
the boys and men went fishing, or up after lilies ; but for years
past nothing fit for pleasure-rowing. It was a good way from
home, and the Hathaways were busy people who mostly took
their pleasures as they came, among their work ; like melon
vines in cornfields.
" But now," said Richard, " we'll make holidays here."
356 HITHEETO:
He put me in at the stern, spreading my shawl for me.
The covered basket was between the seats.
How deep and dark the water was, under the banks ! How
still and smooth it ran, even out in the middle current where
the sun glanced down, and the oars tossed up sparkles !
We floated out, out of the very world, into a strange still-
ness, and up a wondrous -opening avenue of glory. In all my
life I had never been on the river in such a little boat before.
That singularly dark water the bed of the river here was
a deep, black mud threw up marvellous reflections ; and
all the October splendor was heaped and showered upon its
shores.
Sumachs thrust their lances of flame out from under the
brown alders ; woodbines flung their crimson draperies over
the dark, heavy cedars ; willows bent and dipped their yellow
wreaths ; on the rocks were many-shaded mosses, purple, and
gray, and madder ; coarse river-grasses kept their green,
springing and swaying over in full curves from their dark
hussocks ; the magnificent beds of the pickerel-weed, with
their great calla-shaped leaves, heaped themselves luxuriantly
still.
Down in the underworld of water, all was clear and perfect
as in the air. There were garlands, and stars, and globes, and
arches ; grottoes and aisles ; roofs, pavements, and pillars,
resplendent with living gems. Everything completed itself,
and showed how only half was ever on the earth. The little
islets were like green planets, perfect in beautiful space.
Irregular, lichened rocks, duplicated, spread glorious wings,
like shapes of life. Sometimes, when a wave was made in
rowing, Richard would lift his oars and pause, to see it spread
and break, shattering all this splendor into quivering, pulsing
circles, that trembled up and up, shifting and undulating,
melting and changing, magnifying and diminishing, like a
world broken up in a kaleidoscope.
What a wedding journey it was ! Away from everything,
yet having everything, in a wondrous glory, to ourselves.
Did Richard-know it all? All that he was bringing me to?
All along the same, yet endlessly different. The same
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 357
burning letters, in ever new words and lines. The same light
above, the same depth below.
Bend after bend ; vista after vista ; rounded curves, that
seemed to make an end ; then fresh outlet and onlet, deeper
and deeper into the stillness and the beauty ; a long poem,
with ever-recurring refrain.
" God must mean it very much," I said, thinking it out
aloud.
" What? " asked Richard.
u What he says in colors. He puts them everywhere, and
over and over."
Richard was silent then, as he always was when I grew
mystical. It was a long, long time since I had been mystical
with him before. Or even very often, with myself. Life had
put its plain, hard, practical things upon me in these last past
times. With the beginning of my new life sprang up again
within me this interior impulse that could v lie dormant long,
and still be vital. It was strange how color touched it,
always.
Richard was silent ; not avertedly ; he was simply not out-
wardly responsive. I was disappointed. I did so want him
to read and interpret with me.
I went on thinking, all alone.
"It is in the heavens and the earth ; and in the heaven
beyond the earth. It is the wall of the New Jerusalem ; the
mystery that outlines and reveals the City, and that also,
until we attain to it, holds us out. It dips down and
touches all things with its light. But the light shineth in
darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not."
My heart swelled with great longing and dim apprehension ;
with a sense of holy things to be revealed and brought close ;
of the will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, and the
glory made complete, as here the beauty in the water answered
to the beauty above.
God's finger touched the world, writing his signs upon it.
His finger also touched our lives, stirring their love into
beauty. We must go reading and learning through all the
years. Must we not read together?
358 HITHERTO:
I laid my hand on Richard's, as he rested on his oars. He
took them in, drew me beside him, and put his arm about me.
"We floated idly, in the beautiful shade and stillness, dropping
back a little in the river-current.
" We must be married in the spirit, Richard," I whispered,
resting in his strong, loving hold.
" I am married to you, Anstiss, through and through ;
every thought and fibre of me."
I was happy ; but there was something not quite satisfied.
Would he not take me into the deep places of his life?
Would he not care for the depths of mine ?
THE SILENT SIDE.
Richard rowed up the still river, with the glory on either
hand. Before him was the face of Anstiss ; pure, peaceful,
thoughtful.
It was as if through his life flowed just such a river ; hushed,
shut in ; away from the world.
Secluded between deep banks ; up above were the dust and
hurry and toil of high roads and field-faring men ; here it
was holy holiday, always. But the river could not pour itself
forth, ( running out into life on every hand ; it must hold its
silent way, growing by that which should be continually
poured in.
Down, far down, shone the glory of the heaven and the
beauty of the earth ; true in its true profound ; but none could
enter under their arches, into the far-reaching aisles, or, putting
forth a hand, grasp and bring back the golden branches.
Thought and beauty were in him like this. A touch resolved
them into shadows ; only fact stood fast, and might be
measured and handled and talked about.
The river of his heart was full of answering blessedness,
this day ; of rounded, perfect pictures, half a dream ; which half
he could hardly say. He felt its far-off springs away up in
the mountain places of being, where souls are solemnly alone ;
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 359
where the beginnings of life are born, and continually renewed,
beside the throne of God.
He know not why the river hushed him so ; where were the
awe, and the tenderness, and the close, beautiful withdrawal,
and the bosom-holding of great Love.
He only knew that it had been so to him many times before,
alone ; that it was doubly, dearly so to-day, as he felt before-
hand that it should be.
" I saved it up for her all this time. I was jealous of it for
her. I should never have brought her here, unless But it
had to be some time, as it is to-day. I must have had her
here.
" 'In the midst there is a River ; ' there, where there is no
more sea.
" ' In the midst there is a River.' "
It repeated itself over and over in his mind ; yet he
thought not about his thinking. If it had come to his lips, it
would have opened a joy of thought to Anstiss ; a joy that the
thought had been with him.
What did come to his lips was :
" I should not like to live where there was not a river near.
I don't believe I ever could."
" Have you been here much, Richard?
" Yes ; I know it all. It has been like the Pine Lane,
Anstiss. It is one of your places."
She longed for the deep places of his life ; to be taken into
them with him. How could she not see that this was it,
her very longing? How could she not see what it stood for
with him having her here beside him ? How the untranslated
signs were yet signs to his soul of what was in God's Soul
also as he made them?
" See that red oak, Anstiss ; in there among the brown,
high back, in the field. It was a good thing, its getting there,
among the walnuts. Somehow, things do seem to get into
the right places ; it's wonderful how."
His eye ran from tint to tint ; one needed the other ; the
carbuncle of the oak, and the walnut brown ; the scarlet of
the creepers and the deep, sombre shadow of the evergreens ;
360 HITHERTO:
flame-color and tender yellow kissing each other in the maples ;
the bronze of the ash, and the mellow gleam of the chestnut ;
the soft blue of heaven interspacing and enfolding all. You
leaned against the restful contrast ; there was asking and
answering ; there were chords.
" It is like a tune in a church," he thought to himself; but
he did not say so, because he could not have told why. " You
get one part, and it makes you want another. You 'know
what must come next, though you never heard it before."
" God must mean it very much," Anstiss said then.
It was not that the word repulsed him ; but that below
words his thought moved unformed. It had touched him,
the tender scale in color, striking harmonies to the spirit,
like the harmonies in sound ; prophesying and fulfilling.
Anstiss reached for the meaning ; the word that the color
and the music brought. She questioned ; analyzed.
Richard hushed himself before these things, always ; he let
his spirit be played upon, like Eolian harp-strings ; he knew
not what it was that stirred. He let the glory touch him ; as
the rainbow comes down among the tree-tops in a field, and
rests its pillars on the very grass. He was content that it
should shine.
It was a beautiful thing to this son of nature to be alive ; to
move and breathe among these dear concordances ; he left
them simply to the " goodness and the grace ; " they were, and
he was glad.
He would not have quoted the Scripture, nor understood
that in his heart were the words of the Christ ; yet, as Anstiss
spoke, something warm within him, under his silence, recog-
nized with a tender humbleness the continual gift.
" For the Father loveth the Son, and giveth all things into
his hands."
This was what God " meant, so much," in his beautiful
world. In his world where things got, wonderfully, into their
right places. Where Richard and Anstiss Hathaway were face
to face, this day of utter peace. Where they were to be, side
by side, alwaj-s, while the world should be for them. It was
just His good pleasure, giving his little ones the kingdom.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 361
" I am married to you, Anstiss, through and through.
Every thought and fibre of me."
The whole man spoke ; out of a whole, loyal heart.
Just as much a little while after, with not a word between,
when he pushed the boat in under a sloping, bank ; where
cedars and alders, elders and willows, barberries and black-
berries, with grape-vines and woodbines flung among and over
all, grew as they do grow beside New England streams ; and
far up into a quiet shade ran -a little pathway.
"Are you hungry, Nansie? It is time my little wifie had
her dinner."
It was so dear to him that henceforth he should feed and
care for her, of right and always.
362 HITHERTO :
CHAPTER XXIX.
HOME.
I LIKED so much the little beginnings of my own house-
keeping.
Aunt Ildy brought over to me my mother's silver, marked
with her name. I never knew about it ; she had kept it for
this time.
There were pretty little, old-fashioned, small-bowled tea-
spoons, with scallop shells upon the handles. There was a
quaint, low, long-lipped cream-boat with a high, slender loop for
a handle, and there was a broad, shallow basin, in whose pure,
gleaming round I delighted to turn and rinse the delicate
little cups that had been Richard's mother's. I could not
use it for a slop-basin. For this I kept a commoner one, be-
hind the teapot, out of sight.
I had them all upon the breakfast table the morning after
they came, with the bright, new, crimson-chequered cloth also
that was among my furnishings. The silver looked so pretty
on it, and the glass vase filled with white double asters, and
golden, bronze-streaked nasturtiums and green leaves, was so
fresh and lovely in the middle.
Richard liked my replacings. I put away nothing that he
specially loved, but I made a new-married look about all with
my bridal belongings.
He had had the little breakfast-room and other rooms
repainted before I came. The wainscots in this were now of
a full, creamy buff, my favorite color. I have liked the smell
of fresh paint from that time until now. It seems as if all the
world were new, and every morning were the first one.
It was the holiday season of the year, upon the farms. The
summer grains were gathered ; the winter grains were sown ;
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 363
only the apples and the root crops were being got in, and the
old cider-mill was grinding clear, bright juices that we drank
and gave our friends new from the vats. It was our wedding
wine.
We carried some one day to Mrs. Cryke. The cider was the
errand that he made, but Richard's object was to take his wife.
He made me wear my bonnet with the white ribbons, and
my mazarin blue merino dress. The winds were cold now.
We were in November.
For the cider we got beer, of course ; and much welcome,
and many thanks, and elbow-marks of admiration. Mrs.
Cryke looked at us as the old and solitary do look at the
young and newty married ; as upon those entered into a beau-
tiful myster} 7 , new and separate for every pair.
" The best of the farm," she said, leaning forward toward
Richard, and underscoring ; " the best of the farm. You
always bring me a taste of that. And now it's a sight of the
little wife, in the newness. The wife is the best of all, to
the husband, Mrs. Hathaway," italicising with her other
elbow at me, " the best to you is Mm ! "
How the elbows marked the pronouns and the antithesis ;
how they put in the dash, pausing between their sweeps either
way ; how the whole anatomy of the woman was alive with her
earnestness, and her friendliness, and her gladness ! It was
good to have been married, even for a word like this.
She bent aside to me, presently, with an elbow held up be-
hind my shoulder, as speaking with a particular privacy :
" Did you ever read ' Sir Charles Grandison' ?"
I had read it years before, sitting in clear Mrs. Hatlmway's
room, where the seven leather-bound volumes lay in the little
book-cupboard, except as I, in my visits, brought them out,
and once, when she had lent them to me for a while.
" Long ago, yes," I answered.
" Better read it again, now. I've got it ; lie lent it to me.
Now I'll give it back to you. Because, you see," she added,
bringing her other elbow up before me in a still closer shelter,
and leaning still more face to face into the parenthesis,
" He's part Graudison ! "
364 HITHERTO:
Nothing would do but she must bring them out ; also some
bottles of her beer to carry home ; ^and. making us promise to
read the one and drink the other, faithfully, she let us go ;
shouldering us out, by way of lingering, delighted demonstra-
tion ; and stood there by her door, looking after us, with her
arms high akimbo, as if it were a manner of benediction.
These quiet, pleasant goings about seeiugs and being-
seen were our honeymoon. Two or three times Aunt Ildy
and Hope came over and drank tea. Hope drew Aunt Ildy
more and more into a genial living. For Hope herself life
seemed just as full, as satisfying, as ever. She looked on,
apparently, into no long, dull years, with Uncle Royle and
Miss Chisrn growing older and older, the latter, perhaps,
crosser and crosser ; as Lucretia said, " more kind o' pudgicky,
you know ; " she dreaded no tiresome routine ; all was glad
and fresh ; every day began with a glory and ended with a
peace.
Hope had no wants ; the thought of a joy was joy ; you could
" see nothing that wasn't there, somehow."
She entered so into the joy of our marriage. " You see it's
something you can't keep me out of," she said to me one day.
" The goodness and the realness of anything like that go such
a great way. Everybody gets some. No two people, nor no
five, can keep the whole. Being married, and being born, and
being converted, and coming home from a great way off after
along time, why, they spread! The whole town is glad,
and takes thought about it. Or else, why do they all turn
round in church to look at folks that have had a happening ?
And this is such a right, beautiful thing ! "
Hope took nothing just like other people. Not even pain,
and fear. She went beyond, always.
We were talking one daj r , it was linked so with this " hap-
pening " of ours, of the thunder.
" I do not think you were half so frightened as the rest of
us," I told her. " And it didn't seem to stay by you, the
awfulness of it, as it did with me. It went quivering over
me, it does now, sometimes, just as those blue lights
quivered about the door-frames after the storm was past.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 365
And while it was happening O Hope ! I wouldn't live
through that again, for any living afterward ! "
" Any living? O Anstiss ! You don't know what it might
be!"
There was a sort of rapt intenseness in Hope's face as she
spoke. I remembered that a gleam of it had been across her
paleness even on that day.
" You couldn't have been afraid ! " I cried. " I wonder
what you are made of ! "
" Yes," said Hope, slowly and simply, as one recalling and
examining a feeling past, " I was afraid. But I was some-
thing else, too. I think," she added, with a quiet kind of
earnestness, "that I was interested."
" Interested ! Hope Devine, how do you mean?"
" I was interested," she answered, with the same abstracted
simplicity, " to see what God would do with me next."
She was always so sure that God would do something next.
That her story that no one's story was ever all told
and done.
We had Miss Bremer's lovely first book to read, that early,
frosty, firelighted time, the " Neighbors." How good it was
for me ! How it confirmed my certainties showing its
kindred simple, pleasant, not too poetic or romantic, pastoral
and domestic life ! Reading about Bear and Fanny, and the lit-
tle sugar-cakes, and the cow Audumbla, and the teas on Svano,
yes, even of ma chere mere and her sharpnesses, I sa\y
such an encouraging and indorsing reflection of my own sur-
roundings, and my own cheer ! I could live in this story, as
we only can in such as touch and illustrate our own. My life
was as much a story an idyl as this. That was what
curiousty ratified even my hone}" tnoon content.
And so the snows came down, and the bleakness ; and
Thanksgiving came and went, our first Thanksgiving ; and
Christmas was near at hand ; and the deep winter closed in
around Broadfields and the Farm.
366 HITHERTO:
CHAPTER XXX.
SATISFIED?
A DAY of pain. A day in the depths. Reaching hour by
hour into darkness ; in a blind struggle ; longing for rest ;
for the end ; any end.
Then, again, the second time in my life, a night of in-
finite peace. The September moon glinting in at the blinds.
Crickets singing in the sweet, dry, autumn stubble.
My baby, soft-breathing, my real, little, living bab} r ,
by my side.
Richard gone away, with a smile on his face, into the
guest-chamber.
Mrs. Cryke sitting by the .low, small fire, settling little
things about it that might be wanted.
I wondered if she would tend the baby with her elbows.
No. She only -talked with her elbows. She did everything
with the quickest, lightest, tenderest fingers.
But what if she should suddenly need punctuation marks ;
the baby in her arms ? I laughed out, gently, at the fancy.
I think she was frightened. She came to me quickly, lean-
ing over the bed. I could see the anxious questioning in her
raised elbows then.
"Nothing, nothing," I said. "I am only so happy."
And so I was. We laugh more but of our moods, than at the
things, always.
"Well, there, don't then, dear," she said, soothingly.
" Leave off being happy till morning."
But I kept waking up, for- nothing else than to be happy,
all night long. All night long the dear little breathing was
at my side.
" And God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life."
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 367
That kept coming to me. God had begun his creation, all
over again for me.
" What will Richard say in the morning?"
He had gone away so quietly ; only with that kiss, and
' look of shining happiness upon his face.
In the morning he carne in, and looked at us, very much as
if he were afraid of us both.
"How is the little wife? And how is the little wife's little
man ? "
That was all he dared to say, or could say, somehow.
I was well enough. I would have liked to have had him
say more.
[Richard Hathaway had not shut his eyes to sleep the whole
night long. All night, till the day began to come, he had
lain in a deep reaction of joy, mutely thanking God. Listen-
ing for any sound from his wife's hushed room. Holding
back his gladness, lest he should be glad too soon, or too
much. Afraid lest some terrible reversal might be even yet.
Once he stole to the door, that was ajar, and looked in.
They were all still, and asleep. Then, after the cocks began
to crow, he slept also, for an hour.
After he had kissed his wife and spoken to her those few
words, he had gone away with tears in his eyes that no one
saw.
" I suppose," Anstiss said, slowly, to herself, " men take
it for granted that their babies will be born. They are glad,
but they haven't been through the awfulness, the blackness ;
helping God find a life in the dark. Only he and women
know."]
That passed by.
My brain was overstrained, even with happiness ; and when
it rested, nty soul rested, and I saw more rightly. I lay in the
peace of my guarded room, shut up to the luxury of thought,
and blessed, continual, new possession. I rested in Richard's
tenderness, shown in every watchful care, shining down upon
me and my baby in that deep, wistful look of his eyes, so
368 HITHERTO :
gentle for a man, so brimming with what came to eyes onty,
or lay upon lips unbent, half moved with undelivered words.
Richard loved me with all that love. I knew it. Was I
not content ? Or why ?
If only loving me so, he could lay his strong hand on mine
and lift me up ! Lift me, always, up, and up, into the light !
If he did not stop right there, in just his happy tenderness,
most like a woman's almost like a child's. If there were
only a grand high wisdom with it, overshadowing me, reflect-
ing to me God's Face ! If he could always go up into the
mount for me, and bring me down the word, the answer !
"Why did I demand all this ? Why was only one side of
me happy and full content? Why should I have more than
other women ?
I lay and let myself be blessed with that which came. I
was blessed then. I would not let myself look at that shut-
down longing.
The September days were beautiful. The sounds that crept
into my blinded room were sublimated sounds. The creak
of the wagons, the voices of the farm-men as they came and
went, the low, motherly cluck of hens, the flutter of pigeons
coming down for crumbs to Martha's door, these were
sounds of heaven, touching upon the calm wherein I lay, a
woman who had brought a life from God into the world. I
had been close to heaven. Its airs came back with me. I
heard as the angels hear.
Shadows flickered in upon the white ceiling ; shadows of
glorified life ; the noise, the dust, the ache and tire, dis-
charged ; only the beautiful spirit left, as it sifted through
upon my rest.
Mrs. Cryke was a minister of grace, wings and all ; for
there were plumes upon her elbows to me, as she carried
them. She held them over my boy while he lay upon her lap,
fresh bathed and robed, shielded lightly with soft flannels.
She hovered over him with caressing touches upon tiny lips
and chin, her face beaming and bowing upon him, between
outspread wings, like a cherub's.
Mrs. Cryke could do everything. Was that why the super-
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 369
fluous, anticipative energy flowed out so at those upper joints,
before it came down to her hands ? Was there an instinct of
fingers there ? Or was i,t the beginning of wings ?
She had come to me because the nurse I had engaged was
taken ill, and I had needed her sooner than I thought. She
sta}'ed because we liked her so. Her cat, Solomon, kept house
for her, but I am pretty sure that Richard and Putterkoo got
round there every day or two, not unaccompanied with what
Solomon received as " the best of the farm."
There was in Mrs. Cryke her own individual streak of the
abounding New England quaintness. She amused me hourly
with her sayings, the aptness and suggestiveness of them.
The second day after my baby was born, she went to a
press not constantly used, in my room. I remembered that
the morning of my illness it stood open, left so after some
hurried bringing out of something that was wanted. I
remembered lying and looking at the door ajar, in lulls of
suffering, with a half-delirious feeling that the agony was
behind it and would come forth upon me again.
It had been a warm noon-tide. The air was summer-hot ;
but at night it changed, and since then, mountain winds had
shaken their sparkles through all the atmosphere and made it
keenly bright.
" I declare to Moses!" she exclaimed, in an undertone, to
herself. " If here isn't day before yesterday shut up in this
'ere clusset ! "
" Don't, for the sake of all the children of Israel, let it out,
then, Mrs. Cryke," I cried in answer, laughing, from the bed.
"Massytoous! did you hear? I haven't gone and stirred
you up?" And she elbowed toward me. "You aint to
laugh before this time next week not a mite I " she said, sol-
emnly, enforcing the solemnity by a sweep that seemed to
gather up the time she spolie of, and to thrust the days
behind her.
" Now, I'll do the talking, and the laughing, too all that's
good for you if you'll hold still. I and the little king ! "
And she turned to hover over the cradle, where a small nest-
ling and a little meditation of a cry began.
24
370 HITHERTO:
" As for the yesterdays, young general, the days when you
wasn't, they'll never be again, you know ; and you'll never
,know how to believe they have been. This is the Year One
for you ! But they're put away, and more or less of 'em is
shet up somewheres. They aint always pleasant to let out,
that's a fact ! But to-day is always big enough to freshen
'em."
Mrs. Cryke and Martha got on, also, in the loveliest way,
together. The elbows had always some new admiration
marks for doings downstairs ; there was always some cheery
story to tell of the pleasantness and comfort kept there.
" She's in the cider-suller, now," was the bulletin one day.
*' Precisely in her aliment. A muck of dirt and cobwebs
behind where the empty barrels stood." The elbow went
round behind her, here, and indicated the dark corner.
" Martha says she hates dirt ; but she don't, unless it's with a
kind of lovin ' hatred. She wouldn't know what to do without
it. She loves it as the Lord loves a sinful heart ; for the
blessedness of making it clean again ! No sin, no salvation."
She told me I had "just everything, and one to carry," to
make me contented. " House, and farm, and husband, and
girl, and now this little SpeaJcer-of-the-House-of-Hepresenta-
tives ! " She had a new name for him every hour.
" I am contented, and thankful," I said. I spoke truly. I
went further, and spoke more truly yet. " But I'm not satis-
fied. I don't suppose anybody is."
" They are if they don't expect too much just where they
can lay their finger on it. It's all round. You can't get the
Lord God all in one piece, anywhere. He had to make the
heavens and the earth, and all that in them is, for that. You
must take your pieces as he gives 'em out, one at a time ! "
Her elbows circled, indicatively, great horizons, speaking
of the Lord God, and the heavens and the earth through
which he comes down to souls, and a quick jerk a home-
thrust pointed her personal application.
They were given to me, those words of hers, character-
ized and impressed upon me by her oddities, to be laid up
among the "yesterdays;" to come forth when their hour
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 371
should be. They did me good then ; but I had to live on, and
find out. They waited, as the Bible waits for us.
" Satisfied ! " she broke out again, afterwards. " I don't
know as we're anywheres commanded to be satisfied. We're
to be content, and patient; it's the jpromwwss that says ' satis-
fied ! ' Napoleon Bonaparte's beginning to squirm down there
out of sight. I guess he's about ready to be dug up."
And she fairly paddled, with elbows outheld and quivering,
toward the cradle.
571 HITHERTO:
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE SILENT SIDE.
AS WELL AS HE KNEW HOW.
" I SUPPOSE it's as much as loving ever comes to, in this
world, living alongside.
" I wonder if it was a mean thing of me. to take her. I
wonder if she'd have found more in somebody else ; or whether
somebody else would never have eome ; or, supposing he had,
if it would have turned out the same. The same for her as it
is now for me, living alongside.
" It's enough for me to be by her. To know that the same
things will happen to both of us ; that we can't run apart
and lose each other, in all this world.
" Do they, though? The same things? It don't hardly
seem so. ' Two grinding in one mill. Two in the same field.
Two sleeping in one bed. One taken, the other left.'
Where, yes, where, Lord?"
There was a long time, then, that he sat, unthinking. Not
shaping his thought, as these had been shaped. Just looking
at it in a blind mental stare. Looking at this life of his ;
the riddle that it was ; that it was growing more and more to
be.
" Five years ago, to-day.
" He'd have been a nice little boy. Talking and asking
questions. Learning to read, perhaps. Saying little hymns
Sundays, to his mother, as I said them to mine. Maybe he
says them to 7ier, now. Mother ! Little Richie ! Little, little-
Richie ! "
The man's hand was clenched hard as it pressed his cheek
leaning on it. It was the love that grasped for Ms boy ; the
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 373
sign of the thought that held him so fast. It was like the
mother's holding tightly to her heart, with sobs, the little
shoes, the little nightgown, any little thing that had had-
him in it, if she opened now and then some drawer where such
things lay. Men do not go and do that, often. But some-
thing clutches and wrings, holds close and fast, when the
thought comes that is like a tiny presence. They do not tell
women of these moments, either. They get over them alone.
Women need not be reminded. Let things sleep, if they
will.
Anstiss came up behind him.
" It is five years to-day, Richard," she said, as if he had
occasion to be told.
" I know it, dear. I was just thinking of it. Just think-
ing what a nice little boy he would have been."
He put his hand up and took hers that lay upon his"
shoulder.
"Give me something!" she cried; imperatively, im-
petuously. "It is so hard to-night. I have been bearing it
all day."
' She wanted a word a hope. Some man's strength, better
than her own, of soul and faith, to hold her up.
" "We'll go and take a ride, Nansie. You've been at home
all day. You need it," he said kindly, and stood up instantly,
to go and do for her.
" I'll bring Swallow round in a minute. We'll ride out
over Pitch Hill."
She let him go without a word, and then stood still and
uttered a sharp " Ah ! " like a scream kept in to a single point.
" Pitch Hill will be no nearer heaven ! "
But she went to ride. She had only that to do, unless she
stood still there and shrieked it out.
And Pitch Hill was nearer heaven, though she might not
know. For the calm sunset helped her, and the sweet air ;
and heaven flowed in upon her, silently, from the deep, human
love yearning at her side. Out of it, though unspoken,
virtue came. Nothing goes back quite void, into man's heart,
any more than into God's.
374 HITHERTO:
Richard was cheerful ; he talked of pleasant things ; simple
every-day talk it was ; he thought that would do her most
good. How could she know, therefore? How could she
guess the "Where, Lord?" that had been the heart-cry of
his pain, an hour ago?
So they sat, " alongside."
It was almost two years since the child had gone. Five,
to-day, since he had been born.
They were neither of them, all the time, as they had been
to-day. For the most part, they lived along, as others do ;
side by side in the world, that was in so many things a
pleasant world for them. One great pain had come into it,
one great joy had been swallowed down into darkness ; but
they did not sigh, or cry, always. It was nearly two years
ago.
Settled down, as people say, to married life. Only a man
settles more entirely than a woman, or he seems to do.
Richard Hathaway could not stop, often, to take his life out
and look at it. Its great fact was accomplished. Out of his
love-season, the time of his doubt and longing, he passed into
calm certainty and every-day using of the life that had been
given.
He had no such questions to ask as Anstiss had. He had
wanted, with his whole heart and soul, this that he had got.
If this were not pure and full happiness for him, the wide
world the threescore years and ten did not hold it in his
behalf.
For Anstiss, for any woman, who knew?
Man's nature his part is forthgoing, demanding.
Love, that is his pursuit, comes to a woman. Shall she take
this that comes ? Is this the right love ? She must begin by
asking, searching herself. Perhaps, like Anstiss Hathaway,
she is of a nature that keeps asking, searching ; testing life
all through at every point ; testing herself. Yet, for the mo-
ments in -which she thus holds her soul, palpitating, under the
lens of its own scrutiny, there are days and months and
years when she just goes on. You may breathe deep, however,
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 375
or you may only breathe from the top of your lungs. Very few
do any ? live from their utmost depths.
When Richard Hathaway did doubt, did test himself,
it was to ask as he had to-day, "Was it right by her?
Could there have been anything better for her, if I had let her
alone?" He who had waited, while better things seemed
near her, giving them their full opportunity, asked this. Who
had only loved on, as he could not help loving, until one day
she took his love at last, blessing him immeasurably.
Coming now through the meadow lands homeward, below
Pitch Hill, he stopped where the blue gentians grew, and went
and gathered them for Anstiss.
" They can say better things than I can," he thought, hold-
ing their delicate stems tenderly as he came back to her.
He kept the year all through with flowers, as Christians
keep a year of prayers.
They did say things for him ; they told of the blooms in his
heart ; they were words that satisfied her in the moments when
they came.
She turned and held her face up to him for her thanks.
" You are so good, Richard ! "
" I'm only as good as I know how, Nansie. That isn't
much."
Why did he always put himself down so? Did she catch
the under-thrill of his voice that would have trembled if he
had not been strong ? Could she feel the great tide of will
and blessing that surged through him, as if he transmitted
God's own throb of tenderness for her? Did she find all that
in the kiss he gave her thanks ?
He went himself, when they got home, for the new milk
Martha kept for her from May-Blossom's " strippings,"
lest she should forget to drink it. He stood by, smiling
while she emptied the glass of its pure, rich draught. Anstiss
had not been strong these last two years.
He had soothed her back, in his own ways ; they had not been
just the ways she asked for ; they had been signs, not speech,
signs only of a simple, every-clay love ; but they quieted
376 HITHERTO:
her ; she would have hated herself if she had not let them
comfort her.
He went away with something bounding in his heart where
his own questioning and wondering had been ; a joy that he
had served her and she had smiled.
" I don't suppose that any one could quite look out for her
as I can, after all. I know her little ways, and the things she
needs so well.
" I don't believe she could have been better off in any new,
strange life. She wants hushing and quieting down ; it
wouldn't do for her to be kept on the strain.
" They say a child grows up, sometimes, with a hankering,
it don't know what for ; something, perhaps, it ought to have
had when it was a baby. Nansie never had any mothering
when she was little. Nobody else would have known about
that, as I do."
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 377
CHAPTER XXXII.
NANSIE'S WAYS ; WHY SHOULDN'T SHE T
" IT would be pretty down at the Knoll," said Anstiss.
It was summer-time again.
Richard looked round with a smile. His smile was always
so full and so beautiful that she saw no unusual fulness in it
now.
" Yes," he said, " and cool, too. Some of the boys can
carry down things."
Anstiss waited a moment.
" You haven't any objection?" she said, hesitatingly.
1 " Not a bit. It is the best thing. Have just as good a
time as you can."
" That was dear of her," he thought, as she went from him
into the house. " Dear of her, to think of that. But it's all
hers, as I told her long ago. Hers to do just whatever she
likes with. And if she is happy there, why, isn't that what
I kept it for? I don't much believe in Mrs. Cope, though."
Anstiss did not think he noticed. Did not think he quite
understood her half reluctance, and her thought that he might
have the same, or more.
But the place that had been good and sweet enough to take
her to for that best fulfilment of his life, was none too good
to count among the things and places that should give him
power to fulfil all his meaning by her, to " make her as happy
as the day was long."
With all his goods with all his bests he did endow
her. There had been no beauty, no sacredness, for him, that
could be less sacred and beautiful by being made most com-
mon in her service.
Walter Raleigh laid down his mantle for the feet of the
378 HITHERTO:
queen. Richard Hathaway laid down rich and sweet associa-
tions that had wrapped about the days and the thoughts of his
solitude, desiring them to be handled, trod upon, anything,
so that they might be the richer and the sweeter and the
gladder, now, since the days of his solitude Avere over.
It was all he could do ; it was the bread and the wine ; but
the spirit and the life were the gift. We live among signs and
sacraments ; by and by the books of the meanings shall be
opened, and we shall see all holy things within their
parables.
" Let us come over to the Great Mowing," Mrs. Grandon
Cope had said.
She had company at South Side. She had kept Anstiss to
tea one afternoon when she had driven over, and had intro-
duced her to the Cabinet Secretary's wife.
The Farm, through Anstiss Hathaway's friendship, was a
kind of graceful appanage of South Side. It made Mrs.
Cope's country life and sphere of sway larger, more varied in #
novelty, more beautiful. These people who lived in Wash-
ington three-fourths of the year found something joyously
fresh and rare in this glimpse of utterly different things.
And Mrs. Hathaway of Broadfields^ was charming. They
came to see her as they would go away into any still, wild
place to see a waterfall, or find a spring that bubbled up,
without waiting for fashion, in a wilderness, having a flavor
and virtue that are only born in just such depths.
Augusta Cope knew better than to bring out heaps of city
people to see these tired officials ; to make parties, and give
dinners ; even with the fair attractions of South Side to lend
a rural qualifying. She took them quite away, except
when she gave them absolute stillness and rest, to Red
Hill, or out among the Ledges ; to see Mrs. Cryke and drink
beer ; or over to Hathawa}^ Farm and " our old friends."
Nobody entertained with such perfect genius as Mrs. Gran-
don Cope.
" She was just so about the West Room," Richard Hatha-
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 379
way went on thinking. "As if she mightn't make her own
home here, in any fashion she pleased ! "Why, that's the way
to have it home. It isn't those -tilings that I mind, ; when
she comes out, and gets interested. It's onl} r when she draws
' in and shuts up, and I feel like somebody in a fairy story, that
has married a kind of a spirit, or elf, or mermaid, or some-
thing, that has ways high-air, or deep-seaways that he
can't follow her in, or know anything about. Yet, after all,
there's only one way.
" She knows I like mother's ways, for mother's sake, and
for old times. But when they were mother's ways, it was
mother's life that was in the house ; it was her day 4 now it's
my wife's day, and they're her ways. "Why shouldn't her turn
come? By and by, perhaps, even yet, they will be
' mother's ways ' to Nansie's children."
But he had said nothing like all this to her, when she had
wanted the west room new papered and carpeted, and the
dark chintz hangings taken away.
He only said, " Surely, Nansie. Do as you like. There's
no need of any scruples about the money."
She felt he was kind, as he always was ; but, as always,
she scarcely knew half his heart, and he seemed scarcely to
know half hers.
She made the room beautiful with her own fresh taste.
She liked full, sunny tints, or strong and deep ones. She
cared for no blue or rose colored fineries in such wise.
In her own room, which had been Mrs. Hathaway's,
which had always been Mrs. Hathaway's, without making
any sudden or radical change, she had gradually gathered
about her much in the cool, shadowy green that she best loved
for a spot to really rest and abide in.
In this guest-chamber, she put, now, a carpet of rich garnet
shades, that glowed like a warm welcome before the entering
feet ; the walls she covered with a soft buff, like measured
sunshine ; and there were curtains to bed and windows of buff
also, hanging full, making the whole place mellow and glad,
and just bordered with the contrasting crimson. The- buff
china that she remembered in her lirst beautiful visit to the
380 HITHERTO :
Farm, stood on a corner shelf draped like the rest ; and for
the broad, old-fashioned toilet, 'flounced and bordered in like
manner, she had made, in potichoinanie, buff and garnet,
two tall, graceful, stoppered flagons or vases, and a globe-
shaped covered bowl, that was filled with rose-compote.
Mrs. Grandon Cope said the room was lovely.
" Chiefly, my dear, because with 3 T our pretty freshening, you
have kept the old Hathaway look through it all. Don't give
that up. You can't think how different it is from places where
people turn upholsterers in."
So thejf were all coming out, and would see it.
Anstiss had pleasure and pride in her house-keeping.
They would go out into the Great Mowing, so magnificent
when all the hay was down.
" Nobody else has anything like it for them," Augusta said.
"You may be sure of that."
Anstiss had on a white dress, and stood in the shady old
doorway, when they came. Martha, in a " spry-colored
calico," moved back and forth across the farther end of the
long hall, with lingering step, like a figure in the back scenes,
on for effect.
Hope had come out in the morning. Aunt Ildy could not
leave Uncle Royle. Hope wore a brown dotted muslin, and
her gleaming hair was tied with a brown ribbon that lay like
a shadow in the gold. Hope's eyes were more like the sun-
shine fuller fed chalices than ever.
Mrs. Grandon Cope filled a great space around her, as she
alighted, with flowing, brilliant, delicate French lawn, striped
with the new, vivid shade of blue ; a large black silk cardinal
swept from her shoulders over this and parted from the throat
in front, showing the dress ; her bonnet was of the finest and
whitest straw, lightly adorned with priceless black lace and
azure flowers.
There was rose color, and more white, and violet, with laces
and ribbons, and pearl and primrose tinted gloves, and little
white mists of cobweb pocket-handkerchiefs, and furlings of
fringed parasols like dropping butterflies, as the several car-
A STOUT OF YESTERDAYS. 381
riages set down their occupants, and the group gathered and
pressed gently up into the hall over the wide doorstone ; and
the whole entrance was full of dainty fabric and color, and
sounds of soft, trained speech, and rustle of motion.
The spry-colored calico stood motionless at the back.
" My sakes, and gracious, and deliverance ! Won't there
be a bloomin'-out in the Great Mowin'? I 'spose they can all
eat, like other folks, though. And I do, therefore and whereas
and above all, hope and pray there'll only turn out to be cream-
cakes enough ! "
Richard Hathaway met his wife's friends at the top of his
splendid upland field, where twenty-eight acres of English
grass, close as the stems could stand, had been swept down
into such great heaps and ridges that the ground it had grown
upon seemed hardly space enough to toss and turn it in.
A dozen men and boys had just done gathering it up, dry,
perfumy, finished into mounds.
Richard was in his white shirt-sleeves, rake in hand.' For
the rest, his light summer waistcoat was as fresh, and his
trowsers as sharp in their newly ironed creases, as Grandon.
Cope's own.
He stood like a prince upon his own borders, with some
sign of royalty in his hand, bidding them welcome.
" I should think you might be proud of him," whispered
Augusta Cope to Anstiss, looking on with a pleased, flushed
smile.
" She is. Just as proud as she can be," said Hope Devine.
It was in moments like these, when Richard showed his
manliest, that Anstiss loved him best.
Tenderness makes a woman grateful; a noble manhood
compels all her deep instincts of love.
382 HITHERTO :
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE GREAT MOWING.
" WHAT is it like, so roomy and yet so full? It is like
something that makes it seem beautiful and grand."
We walked up and down, in the clear, clean spaces, among
the great heaps. In and out, endlessly, almost, we might walk
over the wide sweep and swell of the magnificent field.
"What is it like, Grandon?" said Augusta Cope, laughing.
" Hope wants to know."
" It is like a great camp."
"It is like a city, with domes, and wide, splendid streets
and squares."
"It is like a council of thrones."
" It is like a sea, with islands."
One spoke after another.
Still Hope smiled, and waited.
" Not enough, or not right, yet? " asked Mr. Cope.
"Don't they all seem, too? What makes them grand?"
she questioned shyly, still smiling.
" You want the idea behind, the archetype," said Gran-
don Cope.
" Yes, back of all," said Hope.
" Do you think you can get it? "
He was interested and amused.
" I don't know," she said, in her rapid, rippling way. " It
is a great way off from this little hay-field, and all those
other things might be between, but it does remind, and it
is true. I think it is like the sky, after the worlds were
swept up ! "
" Well, I think you can't get behind that," cried the Cabi-
net Secretary's wife.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS.
" I think you can," said Grandon Cope, with a grave quiet-
ness. "That only 'weaves for God the Garment thou secst
him by.' "
That was a long way, out of the haj-field, for people in
" clothes."
Augusta broke the silence.
" I think it is most like a great, big, splendid good time,
and an enormous game of hide-and-seek. I wish the boys
were here."
I had been glad to know that the boys were down at Field-
port with th'eir nurse and their grandparents, when I made the
party. But it reminded me suddenly, and with the thrill that
those other words had already given me, sent a flush to my
cheek, and made me turn away my face.
The boy that I wished were here, the boy in his sixth
summer !
Grandon Cope was walking by my side. We were the last
of the party.
" Many-chambered, and full. Isn't it the Heart and the
Home, that all these things ' seem like,' Mrs. Hathawa}'? "
He had given me time to breathe ; time to put back what had
begun to come with a rush, before he spoke. Then he said it
with such a calm kindness. I was able to look up.
" I thank you, Mr. Cope," I answered him, warmly. " How
did you know ? "
" It has been in my mind ever since I came. Ever since I
saw your husband standing there, in the midst and in tiie
ownership of all this. I knew what it must be to him, and to
you. I have boys to love and to hope for, Mrs. Hathaway."
It was a great deal easier after that. It was not all silk
and muslin and flutter and dainty speech.
Hope knew, too. By and by she had a word for me. She
had had many words, in these years of which the third was
wearing. Every now and then she " saw " something for me.
" Don't you see, Anstiss," she came and said, " that
thoughts are things? In your heart you have a pleasure for
him, and all this would be a joy with you, for lum. That is
the real part. I think he is glad in something, just this very
384 HITHERTO :
now, that you are put in mind how glad he might be. This
is your end of it. Why not take it for a telling? If you
had him here, you could only know that he was glad, and be
glad too. It is just a thought and a thought. It doesn't
matter what the word between is. It might be this pleasant
day and the hay-field ; but it is all the kingdom of heaven ! "
These two understood best. Nobody else came straight to
my want.
We went and sat under the Four Oaks. The men were
piling the hay upon great wagons that went from heap to
heap, down in the lower end of the Mowing. The sun was
almost level low.
They had thrown up the hay for us here, purposely, around
and between the trunks of the trees. The air was heavy with
sweetness, and the soft, springy stems, just dried, pale-green
still with their sealed-up juices, so clean and pliant, took any
luxurious form we tossed them into.
" It is just perfect ! " said the Secretary's lady, out of a
deep nest.
" There is nothing like haytirne in the country, if you
don't have rose-cold," said Augusta.
" Can you ride in a ' rigging ' ? " I asked them. " Because
that is the way I mean to take you to tea, presently."
"On a load of hay? Lovely! But how shall we get
up?"
"It isn't to be a very great 'up,'" I said. " Something
constructed especially for us. And I believe they are coming
with it now."
A large, gray-painted hay-rigging, filled, but not heaped,
drawn by Richard's two handsomest oxen, great cream-coloi^d
creatures with black noses, black tips to their long horns, and
large, beautiful eyes, came slowly up over the swell between
the haycocks. Jabez, swaying his long whip, walked
proudly enough, in his shirt-sleeves, by their heads.
" Haw ! Gee-haw ! Haw, Pres'dunt ! " and the rigging
creaked and wheeled up under the edge of the oaks.
Jabez slid a board from behind the side poles over the end
to th'e ground.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 385
I saw that my surprise was felicitous. The interest and the
uncertainty were complete and delightful. Nobody knew
just what next. Even Augusta, who had been in the middle
as usual, rather patronizing and showing off the glory of field
and sky, by way of elaborately justifying herself in regard to
Hathaway Farm, looked at this moment as simply wondering
and expectant as a child.
We put them in., Richard and I, and took our places at the
end, to be the first to alight. Then the mighty, slow-stepping
oxen drew us on, down " among the constellations," Hope
said, laughing ; " through the milky wa} r ," Richard sug-
gested. How pleased and proud I was of his little joke when
he made one !
But whither, since we were leaving the house behind us?
That they were not to know.
Down into Pine Lane, through the bar-place, crushing along
on its deep carpet of leaf-needles. On and on ; President
and Governor treading slow ; drinking in the summer fra-
grance of the resinous air.
I suppose they had never done anything so purely pastoral
as that. Augusta Cope looked whole thesauruses of admiring
adjectives at me.
But it was no studied stroke of mine, either. It was
simply the prettiest place, and the nicest way of getting
there. Yet she evidently felt that I was covering myself
with glory. I had gone even beyond her guaranty. She
was more than satisfied ; she was ecstatically triumphant
with me and the Farm.
" You are giving us a perfect pleasure," said Grandon Cope
to me.
I knew how exactly he meant each measured word. I was
just a little proud, then, as well as glad. I tasted the high
flavor of a social success.
Richard was simply pleased that I should have all the
praise.
Martha* had done her part gloriously. We had all been
busy in the morning, she and Hope and I, of course. But
the final rendering of all things, and the consummate coffee,
25
386 HITHERTO :
and the delicately brewed tea, these were her responsibili-
ties and achievements. The spry-cotered calico fluttered in
an.tl out of one of the little wood-nooks below the Knoll, like a
flock of strange birds.
It was to be a ha3 T ing-part} r , all through ; we were not to
miss our luxm-ious cushions, even down here. Richard had
had a load sent down on purpose, and it lay like a divan, in
a ridge running around the whole summit, of tne Knoll, in
whose centre stood the table, made only with boards and
barrels, but covered with white Hathaway home linen that
swept the grass.
Did they ever see such biscuits, and such white and brown
bread, in beautiful contrasting piles, I wonder? Or such
cream and raspberries, the red fruit, large and cool and fair,
lying in great baskets, lined and twined with leaves? Or
such cream-cakes, and such sponge loaA'es, cut in long, gener-
ous slices that just lay apart, showing their golden pores?
I trow not.
Quails whistled out in the fields. A single whip-poor-will
in the skirt of the woods began its early evening song. The
pines we had come through rustled, high up, .as the light
evening wind touched their tops. A tender-gleaming }"oung
moon looked in tremulously between the trees, out of the
upper horizon light.
Not a woman there but me had a hall like this to gather
guests in. It was a lovely thing to be the mistress of Hatha-
way Farm.
I set it all down now, and look at it, as I set it down in my
mind and looked at it then. It was a lovely thing a dear
and lovely thing to be Richard's wife ; he so kind and
loving and giving and true ; and to be Mrs. Hathaway of the
Farm. And yet and yet oh, how I hated and blamed
myself, and pitied myself, that somehow, somewhere in nie,
was a place not quite fed, not quite satisfied, not truly giving
itself up to this good man as he gave himself and all to me !
I tell the truth before my own conscience and before God,
that what made me hiddenly wretched the thing that
thrust up its hateful head like a serpent in a Paradise was
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 387
the thought, the misgiving, it was only a glimpse and a
threatening, for I would not face it long and deliberately yet,
not that I was not happy with this whole, strange, exact-
ing" nature of mine, but that I cheated him ; that I did not
give as he gave. Not that I did not as a wife receive all that
could possibly be in a wife's cup of happiness, but that as a
wife I failed and was unworthy.
It was Slno use to ask it now, but the asking would haunt
me all my life. Ought I to have married Richard ?
If my life had not begun hungry ; if I had not been a
child without a mother ; if all nature had fitted rightly and
sweetly to me, and filled me from the first, and as I went
along, I should not perhaps have been this restless, groping,
perplexed soul that I was. If I had been like those EMgcll
girls, I should never have begun to ask what else there was
in the world, or whether I should ever find it. I should have
taken things for granted, and as they came, and my horizon
would at once have bounded and satisfied me. But I was
always looking over into neighbor-lives ; always seeing
people at pleasant windows that looked out as mine did not
look. And so it went on with me. It was the disease bred
of my half-nurture.
Augusta Cope bade me good-night that evening, warmly,
affectionately.
" There was never anything better done," she said. " I am
proud of you, Nannie."
" We thank you for a white clay, Mrs. Hathaway," said
Grandon Cope.
I went through the house alone, in the dark, as they all
drove away. I heard Martha talking to a friend from Broad-
fields Centre, who came over to take tea with her and help
wash dishes. The girl looked up to Martha, so old and ex
perienced, and came to her as an adviser. She had something
special, evidently, to talk about to-night.
" I can't see it any other way, Martha Geddis," she was
saying. " I've turned it over and over, and every way it
looks like a Providence. I expect I shall go. I believe in
Providence."
'388 HLTIIERTO :
" "Well, I'd hold ou to that," said Martha Gedclis," anyhow.
But I'd see to it pretty careful that I didn't hurry Provi-
dence."
I went away into my own room, our room, Richard's
mother's. I sat down by the window where the little table
stood with her great Bible on it, as it always had. Upon the
Bible was my little work-basket. I pushed it aside, and laid
my head down upon the book. I was as one whcroneels out-
side the temple, not daring to go in.
Had I hurried Providence ?
Richard Hathaway walked up and down, behind the house,
in the path that led to the Long Orchard.
" jPve only half done it, after all," he was saying to him-
self, dealing with a new though^ that had put itself before him
to-night. " I've given her my life, with the rest all hanging
upon that. Little Richie's gone, and it's going on six years. If
there should never be another What would a widow's thirds
be to Nansie ? What she wants is her home, this home
that's everything to her. John's well off, and Maiy. I'll put
it down to-night, and I'll see John Proctor Monday."
He went into the house, and sat down in a little room
where he kept books and papers. He wrote out a memoran-
dum of a will.
" All I die possessed of to be my wife's, Anstiss Hathaway 's,
for. the remainder of her natural life. Her widow's thirds to
be hers absolutely. Afterward, the rest to come back to my
brother and sister, or their heirs-at-iaw. The homestead, \villi
the land originally belonging to it, the garden, the Long
Orchard and the little north field, to go to the oldest living of
the family and name."
This was a plain man's way of loving. He dealt with facts.
Perhaps it was easier. He knew what he had done, when he
had done it.
John Proctor stopped him on Monday, when he gave him
the paper and was going away to leave him to make it into a
will.
" One thing, Mr. Hathaway. 1 1 doesn't seem to have occurred
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 3.89
to you. You wish to make this quite unconditional? Mrs.
Hathaway might marry again."
Richard Hathaway stood still a moment at the office door.
" Give her one-third absolutely, if she does ; and one-third
more for her life. Let the homestead come back to the name,
and the rest be divided."
It seemed almost as if he had given her up to another, say-
ing this. He had a strange feeling upon him, riding home.
When he saw his wife in the hall as he came up, it was as if
he had got her back again. He gave his horse to a farm-boy,
and carrie straight in to her.
" My little Nansie ! " he said, putting his arm about her.
It was such a common word with him that she never knew all
there was in it. Yet every time he said it, it came out of
some new thought of his for her, as if he had never said it
before.
If she had known all that was behind it now ! If she should
come to know it, when she could only remember that it had
been !
" My little Nansie ! Has all gone well to-day?"
" Yes, dear," she answered, out of the side of her heart that
was always warm to him. "Only Richard! You are a
great deal too good to me ! "
" Only as good as I know how," he said, again. This, too,
was an old word.
"Am I as good as I know how, as I ever could know
how, to him? Away down, deep? Am I a hypocrite
under the condemnation?"
In. the seventh year of her marriage these questions had
grown up into words, with Anstiss Hathaway.
390 HITHERTO:
CHAPTER XXXIV.
LIGHT.
AFTER that, I saw a good deal of the Copes, all summer ;
and I thought it did me good.
I remembered what Mrs. Cryke had said; why should I
expect to get it " all in one piece"? Why must Richard be
able to do everything for me that God meant in all this world ?
Why not let my life broaden, if it would, and so be more con-
tent with every part? Friends, social interchange, were
not these also a great portion of what is given ? I had been
too much shut up with my own particular living. I had come
to demand too much of it, of ni3 T self.
I came home richer from South Side, always.
I met men of science there, people of high culture, men
and women. I learned about books, and what I wanted to
read ; and Augusta was alwaj^s generous in lending. I
learned what was agitating in the world of thought, of inquiry,
of research. I gathered opinions ; I compared and general-
ized ; and I thought my apprehensions of life and realities and
all related things grew thereby.
Yet at home the smite would come back upon my heart
sometimes ; for I was afraid I grew aivay. Away from Rich-
ard, who had no time no turn, he said for speculations,
or analyses ; for following up the things that people knew and
lived in out in that other world ; things that I wished I could
go to him for. For I did wish it ; I was loyal in wishing it,
still.
One thing I learned, I could not help learning, seeing
them so much. Grandou Cope and his wife were not one, but
two persons.
Augusta was the same Augusta as ever ; no deeper, no
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 391
larger of soul ; and I think that Granclon had just given it
up. It seemed as if they had both given up. She was grace-
ful, courteous, mindful of all her duties of position ; he was a
noble man and thorough gentleman, to his wife, as to all.
But I think they could almost say all that they had to say to
each other, in the presence of the guests they continually en-
tertained. I think she locked away nothing from him. I do
not think she had anything to lock away. She just lived in
the middle, and never cared to withdraw.
He, great, strong of thought, not able to give himself to
her, because simply, a porcelain cup can never hold an ocean,
gave himself out upon all the world, upon all the universe of
thought and things ; gave himself toward truth and eternity.
She recognized this in him, just as the wife of a great mer-
chant or financier might recognize her husband's fiscal talent
and his. influence and weight in the monetary world, never ex-
pecting to understand his ledgers or his banking operations ;
only proud, that belonging to her, he was of himself also,
something. Granclon Cope's powers and achievements were to
her what his earldom would have been if he had had one, and
with it had made her a countess. She had married his mental
rank ; and valued herself accordingly upon it.
Yet she could talk sufficiently and graceful^, too, upon the
last new topics ; that was needful in her world, and as his
wife. She wore the Cope jewels ; that was Mrs. Granclon
Cope's prerogative.
Granclon Cope became my excellent friend. I honored him
with a pure, admiring honor. I received from him what no-
body else in the world could give me.
I was more nearly and more uniformly content, this year,
than I had ever been before. There were two sides to my
life again, and all my. life was larger.
But I had no business to have two sides to my life, in such-
wise.
The time came when I found that out ; found out that I was
in a false and specious content ; that I was patching up what
should have been perfect and entire with that which had no
392, HITHERTO:
relation to it. This was good, but it should not, have been
needed to make good the other. There was evil arid fear in
it, if it were. Fear that it should replace and thrust aside
and put asunder.
A whole year went by, a year of comings and goings
and living on, one of the years that it takes to make a page
in the stories that we tell ourselves, before I began to think
of this, before I turned round and looked back to see where
the time had brought me. Mauj r such years might have gone
by, writing a deep, terrible story in all our lives, without
much sign or blot upon the surface, but for a thing which
happened.
In the end of that next summer, Richard went away into
New York State, to see his brother John and his sister Maiy.
He had business matters with them, and it had also been a
long time- since they had met.
I should have gone with him,iut that Uncle Royle was
failing very much, and Aunt Ildy was not quite well herself.
Hope had a great deal on her hands. So I went to my old
home for the week or ten days that Richard would be gone.
Martha had her friend Priscilla from the Centre, to stay with
her and help keep house ; Priscilla having as yet not " hur-
ried Providence " to conclusions, but being still in a waiting
and counsel-beseeching frame of mind.
I was bus\ 7 , helping Hope, and waiting on Uncle Royle, the
first few days ; then Aunt IkVy's indisposition wore off, and
Uncle Ro3'le was more comfortable. Hope and I had time for
quiet sittings and talks in our own room, and for going out a
little.
One morning, Augusta Cope came down. She had just
found out that I was there.
" Why did }~ou not let me know? " she said.
"I only came to be of use," I told her. "I could not
expect to have leisure to go about."
But in 1113- heart there had been an undefined feeling that I
would not immediately begin to be happy with that other half
of me when Richard had just gone a\va}*.
" Now, however," she said, ' you are more at liberty. You
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 393
must come and dine with us to-morrow. "We have no com-
pany, except one or two sta}'ing in the house. It is not often
3'ou can come so easiby, and Grandon has been showing us
soiiiC pretty experiments lately, which you would like."
"Well, I promised.-
Why not? Only for this half consciousness of a secret
sense of freedom, which had been the reason of my self-disci-
pline in resolvjng that I would not be in a hurry to let the
Copes find me out.
It was strange to say to Aunt Ildy, the next day, so quietty
and without contradiction, that I was " engaged to dine with
Augusta." It was strange to put on before that very glass
at which I had tied the blue ribbon in my hair, and hidden it
away so carefully, like my pleasure, on my first going to
South Side, 1113' rich, sunny-brown silk and my delicate
laces, of my best few, to be sure, but fine and beautiful as
Augusta's own, and to fasten the little three-cornered, ma-
tronly bit that la}' upon my hair with golden pins, and to take
my soft white shawl over my arm, and go down to Mrs.
Grandon Cope's carriage which waited for" me at the door.
For my life I could not help a rkliculous feeling that Aunt
Ilcly would interfere ; at least take off something that she
thought unsuitable or unnecessary in my apparel, before I
went.
It was a pretty coupe, with gray horses, Augusta's own
especial equipage. The carriage and the horses were new ; a
birthday present from her husband.
I did not compare that with what Richard could give to me ;
there was no mean covetousness like that in me ; I desired
most earnestly only the best gifts, the gifts that Augusta
Cope took only at their outside, as she took these things. All,
to her, was but surrounding. I could not help thinking of
that.
Neither were the quiet elegance and luxury of South Side
any more a desire or a contrast to me. I loved my beautiful
life at the Farm. That was as true and as delicate, in its
own fresh, simple way, as this. I was quite content, as I had
been years ago, to think of the two, and to find a kind of uni-
394 HITHERTO:
son between them. I was as willing to be Mrs. Hathaway by
the side of Mrs. Cope, as I had been to see my old friend,
Richard's mother, alongside Allard's mother in the old days.
The elder Mrs. Cope was almost lovelier than ever, now.
Her hair, turned softly silver, gleamed under the same deli-
cate coverings ; her gray and white narrow-striped silk, with
its one little flounce, her lace sleeves, her close collar of Val-
enciennes fastened with a single diamond ; .her face, and
smile, and mien, in all she was as queenly fair and gentle to
the eye of the woman as she had been to that of the child.
The word " mother " still came up in my heart as I looked
at her.
After dinner, in the library, Grandon Cope came and sat by
me.
"I have something to show you presently, Mrs. Hatha-
way," he said. "I remember you love color, and the color-
types. Do you recollect the ' wall of the New Jerusalem ' ? "
" It was one of the steps up for me," I answered. " It was
a point in my life."
" This has to do with it. How, perhaps you will tell me.
You know the idea of the waves of light? "
" The undulatory theory ; yes. We used to laugh at it at
school, saying it was the great quaking bog into which the
philosophers flung all their confusions. Everything inexpli-
cable was dismissed with that phrase."
" But if 3 r ou think of it as a pulse of God's life?"
He asked it low and reverently.
" I did," I said to him, low also, in return. " I wondered
they did not go further, and say that. I knew they just
stopped at the shore line between matter and spirit."
" Do you know what makes the colors in- the soap-
bubble?"
" Refraction, of course ; like any prism."
"But their coming and going, the order of their change.
Do you know they come and fade in the everlasting order,
the octave of the rainbow, the highest, last? As the
amethyst is the top stone of the City Wall?"
I said nothing. I on\y listened.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 395
"Shall you and I make a soap-bubble? A sublime soap-
bubble, with the truth in it? The others have seen it. I wish
that 3 r ou should, too."
He got up and took me in, through a little arched and cur-
tained portiere, to an inner room, a mere recess within the
library, where was a table, with many little delicate experi-
mental appliances upon it ; a cupboard, opening above in the
wall, containing jars and vials; a globe standing in one. cor-
ner upon a pedestal, and upon a bracket, in another, a model
of some elegant machinery in a glass case.
" I will not take it out there to-night. We will have it
quite to ourselves."
He drew forward upon the table a little silver circular
frame, a mere rim, lightly supported, and quite empty.
" 1 shall set a bubble in that, and make it stay ; that is, if
T have good luck," he said.
And he went to the wall-cupboarcj and took down a low,
open, wide-mouthed jar, and a little silver-mounted pipe.
The jar had soap-suds in it.
" Not common soap-suds exactly," said he. " A little
bewitched. Will you blow the bubble, or shall I?"
" I'm afraid I should break the charm," I answered.
He dipped the oowl of the pipe, and blew a clear, round
globe, carefully, to a size correspondent to the little silver
frame ; and then gently and nicety lodged it in the rim, and
detached the pipe.
" I think you have somehow strengthened the charm," he
said, smiling, " I hardly ever succeed with the very first ;
and I wanted especially to have it perfect to-night."
Then he moved it cautiously, placing it under a porcelain-
ehaded reading-lamp, which threw a concentrated force of
brilliant light upon it.
" Now you will see the colors come," said he, " as the
bubble thins. Just as they would have clone if I had blown it
bigger. It is a little rainbow in harness. Do you know
how it will begin ? "What you will see first ? "
" It ought to be the red."
" It will be."
396 HITHERTO:
As he spoke, I saw it coming ; the fine, vivid crimson,
flushing up under the rays of the lamp ; spreading down,
down, like a sunrise over a little world.
" But I never saw a bubble like that ! " I cried. " They
always come in two or three colors, on different sides ; running
round and round, and showing through and through."
" I told you this was subordinated. But that is just be-
cause of the thing I am going to tell you.
" The waves of light, the pulses, the same from every
little centre like this, that they are from the heart of the Sun,
come in measured lengths ; the red longest, because the
pulse is slowest ; the violet shortest, with its inconceivably
fine and quick vibration ; and every little film on earth that
catches them, receives just its own color, as its thickness or
thinness corresponds responds, perhaps I should say to
the stroke, and takes up the beat. Do you see the gold corn-
ing?"
A clear and perfect joy above the softening flush ; a mel-
low beauty lightening more and more, holding the pure sphere
in a loving gloiy ; the crimson fallen down, till it lay, still
receding, diminishing, around the under hemisphere, and just
above the horizon rim ; the gold pouring, pouring in its turn,
like an intense, enfolding rapture. (
" But why do they not flush here and there, as they do
when children blow them?"
"Because this was blown with as regular a force as possi-
ble, to make it even ; and because it was not distended . too
far. Now the varying thickness depends upon the settling
down of the liquid toward the base ; so the red drops, and the
gold comes over ; see, there is the green ! "
Still the crimson lay beneath, like a memory of fire ; above,
the purged and molten gold ; and now, creeping from the top-
most, the fulness, the rest, the Uvingness, of the deep, bright,
satisfying green.
Like an emerald sea ; stealing down gently ; all the little
globe Hooded with it graciously ; changing, changing ; purify-
ing into blue ; the gold let fall, and resting on the vanishing
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 397
line of crimson ; the green sleeping upon these ; the tender
azure calm coming down, like a heaven of peace.
Clearer and clearer grew the thinning sphere ; it was like
fine blue air ; like a sky fragment ; it trembled, as a visible
breath.
"We held our own. Will it go, before it has done ?
Thinner, thinner yet ; only the faintest, purest, gold-light
and soft blue-green, and quivering blue ; the gold gives way ; it
,s not wanted any more ; the mingling of the green is gone.
[t is pure, holy, distant sapphire.
Grandon Cope just lifted a finger, as if he would say, Look !
W~e would not stir the air with a word, leaning toward the
spirit-wonder.
It was violet, now. We could not tell how the blue went by.
Now it was neither water nor air ; but an ethereal flame,
delicate, intense ; something we seemed to see, as it were, in-
wardly ; it was such a far, impalpable beauty. Deepening,
rarefying, receding. There was an impression of a marvel-
Ions instant ; we felt what amethystine meant ; and it was
gone.
The silver rim stood empty.
* I let my head fall down. I felt as if somebody had died,
and I had caught a gleam of heaven as the spirit went in.
" It has been more than a bubble-play to you" said Gran-
don Cope.
Was it a bubble-play to them ?
" Mr. Cope ! It was a human soul ! "
He said nothing ; only looked into my face, that I had lifted,
with deep, fervent eyes.
" It was fire and passion ; it was human joy ; it was life and
fulness ; it was purifying, and peace ; it was the inmost heaven,
at last ! "
" You have seen ! "
Then he stood up.
Was it my own self that whispered to me, or a tempting
spirit, in that instant of seeing, of uplifting ?
Why, across the beauty of what he had given ufe, came the
398 HITHERTO :
flashing consciousness of the recognition those deep eyes had
for me, in the utterance of our common thought ?
Why did I think of Augusta, laughing with low, pleasant
grace,' in that next room, among her guests?
Did I say it to myself? " He never could have looked upon
her so ! "
I do not know whether I thanked him or not.
I got up to go away into the other room.
Grandon Cope's voice made me pause again. He was
gathering up the things that he had used. ,
"It will all come," he said ; I could hardly tell whether to
me or to himself. " But we must rest in the rims God puts
us in."
It flashed out of me, the question born of the keen 'truth.
The truth I saw in life ; his life, and mine.
" But what of the rims we put ourselves in?"
His strong, just, obedient spirit looked forth at me from
pure, swerveless eyes.
" That He lets us put ourselves in? We must be patient in
the rims He finds us in."
I had asked to go home early, for I could not keep Aunt
Ildy up and I knew she would not go to bed till all was locked,
and the house settled.
The coupe came round at half-past nine. Augusta slipped
out into the hall to say good-by, and Mr. Grandon Cope went
with me to the carriage.
He put me in, and stood upon the step, handing me my
shawl and some books that they had lent me.
Neither of us noticed that the coachman left his horses for
a moment.
He was a new servant ; if he had been with the Copes longer,
he would not have done this. I do not know what it was for ;
I believe he said afterward it was onlj r to throw some blanket
into a doorway. The horses started. Mr. Cope glanced to
the front, and called out a stern " Whoa ! " For the space of
a thought he stood upon the step ; it was an instantaneous
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 399
calculation. It was too late to reach their heads, and the
door was swinging open.
He sprang inside and shut it.
We heard the servant rush forward ; we knew he grasped at
the reins ; we caught a cry, half imprecation, half dismay ; we
knew he had lost them ; that we were alone, and the horses
guideless.
Grandon Cope let down the wide front glass.
He reached himself half through, across the driver's seat,
as if he would get out that way, and obtain the reins. He
saw them dragging, I suppose, far out of grasp.
The horses, frightened now, were galloping. We were out
of the avenue, upon the hill.
Then he drew back, and looked -at me.
" Keep quiet and strong," he said. " Something will stop
us before long. The carriage is new, and thickly cushioned.
We shall come out of this."
Then he turned, bracing a knee against the low, front half-
seat of the coupe, for he could not, of course, stand up-
right, and looked forward again, watching.
I do not know whether we ai-e conscious of fear in the very
midst of danger, as we are when it is only threatening. I do
not think that in the actual crash of that electric bolt which
came down above our heads in the old Polisher house, I felt
so much as afterward, when I dreaded that it might come
again. There is a strange sensation, "This is it! It is
here ! " which snatches us into a terrible intimacy and relation
with the peril, that will not let us look at it from far enough
to know its terror, as we do before and after that embrace.
I do not know what it was I felt, as I sat there by Grandon
Cope's side, with the horses running away, -down the hill, to-
ward the bridge.
I made no sound. He kept his face forward, looking in-
tently through the open front at the bounding horses, and the
waymarks of th^road.
We thundered over the bridge, into New Oxford Street.
I heard the shouts of men. I knew a crowd was gathering,
400 HITHERTO:
and running by our side ; a changing crowd, distanced, and
still renewed.
I wondered, passively, what the end must be.
I, too, could see, and watch ; with all the intensity of strained
nerve, and keenly quickened apprehension. The night was
bright. I knew well every bit and pass of the way.
We were in the broad River Street.
There was an old house being taken down, that made a pro-
jecting corner,' at a crossing. A rough fence, enclosing it,
took in a third part of the highway.
The turning here, a short one, led right down upon the open
wharf.
He knew we must bring up there. There, or the carriage
was so fatally new and strong !
Clear as light was the thought that thrust itself upon me
then. Sharpened, distinct. I could neither resist nor deny
it. I can never deny it, to myself or in the sight of Heaven.
" I shall go out of the world God knows where with
this soul that is beside me ! " I can never deny the thrill that
was not all awfulness.
I remembered Hope's saying : " I wonder what He will do
with me next ! "
It was God's doing..
I looked at it in a strange, intense expectancy.
God sent me back into my life again ; after he had showed
me myself.
There was a whirl a shock a sound of crashing, as if
many little helpless sticks were broken, it seemed like that.
It was the strong axle of the carriage.
We were thrown headlong ; the coupe^went down a slight
embankment, and turned directly on its top. I was wedged
in, weighed upon ; my neck bent painfully, my head buried
and pressed down with I knew not what. Tfee blood rushed
behind my eyes. I thought, " Now it has come. Now, my
neck will break."
Then something loosened by me ; I could move ; could
' A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 401
struggle. I was being helped, lifted. I was out in the air,
in Grandon Cope's arms.
I was dizzy, faint ; I tried to stand ; then Mr. Cope put his
arm about me again ; then I heard somebody say, " I do not
think she is hurt." It was Mr. Cope ; but his voice sounded
far off.
I suppose I fainted away. I had never done it before, and
I thought I died.
402 HITHERTO :
CHAPTER XXXV.
THORNS.
HE carried her in his strong arms down the whole long
street. He took his wife from Grandon Cope, and walked
awa} T with her as if she had been a little child.
He had stood at the doorway of Royle Chism's house,
watching. He had got home that afternoon.
He had seen the horses come tearing down the hill.
He knew that it was the Cope carriage, and that Anstiss
was in it. It went by, sweeping, swaying round the curve,
and dashed up the street ; driverless, the reins dragging and
tangling.
He rushed after it, his arms flung out, as if he would reach
from behind and seize it back with his two hands.
The two men stood, bareheaded both, beside the shattered
carriage. The crowd came up.
Mr. Cope gave Anstiss Hathaway into her husband's hands.
Richard went away with, her from among them all, whispering
over her, breathlessly, as he strode along :
" My poor little wifie ! Poor little frightened Nansie ! "
She came to herself, with the motion and the air, just before
the}' reached the door. She felt herself borne along ; her eyes
opened toward the blue night heaven, upon the distant, burn-
ing stars.
"Why! why!" she gasped, tremulously. "What is it?
Which world am I in ? O Richard ! "
For his face bent down above her instantly.
" Don't kiss me ! I was tempted of the devil ! "
"What did she mean? Was her mind touched? Will she
beill?"
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 403
9
Anstiss lay still upon the bed, and Richard watched her.
Aunt Ildy had given her wine, and bathed her head, and
rubbed her limbs, and felt of every bone, and then had made
her take the unfailing six drops of camphor, and left her quiet
with her husband, and gone, herself, to bed.
Hope was in the next room, and would be called if anj-thing
were wanted. Stillness was the best thing.
Grandon Cope had come to the house, to ask about her.
He had told Richard how it was, and the^i with a friendly
grasp of the hand, and a thankful congratulation that it was
no worse, had said he must hasten homeward, to relieve
anxiety there.
Men were coming with the horses. He borrowed a hat of
Richard, and walked on.
If Richard had even been a man of evil mind, or had lived
more among the evil of the world, he could not have thought
ill of this frank, high, 1 " simple gentleman. Anstiss' words
could have no touch of relation to him. Richard Hathaway
truly never thought of it. He was too high himself.
They were mere wildness, or they were out of some fresh
phase of the old, rr^sterious discontent.
" I almost wish she would do something wrong ; something
she could look at outside of herself, and I could forgive her
for," the poor, patient, loving fellow thought.
" She is wearing, wearing, all the time ; eating herself up.
Everything takes hold away down, where I can't reach or help.
She is always holding up her soul to me with a thorn in it."
He did not know that it was poetry and pathos ; it was a
natural illustration out of his homely, gentle, compassionate life.
He knew how to help dumb things in their hurts ; his wife
he could not help.
But he could sit there, all those midnight hours, watching
her sleep ; hoping, fearing, how she might awake ; not know-
ing what the shock had done. She was so tiniorsouie, so sen-
sitive.
By and by she moved ; awoke.
She said she should like a glass of water. Richard brought
it instantly, gladly.
404 HITHERTO :
" "Why, it is you ! " she said, recollecting. " "When did you
come back?"
"Just in time, Nansie, to take care of you. Just in time
for you to frighten me thoroughly. "What were you and Mr.
Cope running away for ? "
He had to make some simple little joke, the first he could
think of. He was so glad.
" O Richard ! I didn't mean to ! I don't want to run away
from you, in anything. I want you to come too, always. I
do want to be a better wife, Richard ! "
There it was again. The string that was always quivering.
" Be a good* girl, now, then, and go to sleep."
She raised herself upon her arm, and looked around.
" Why, Richard, it is the- middle of the night ! You
mustn't sit up there. I can't go to sleep unless you do."
" Then I will. I will come to bed dh'ectly."
He moved away, took out his watcn and wound it, laid off
his coat upon a chair, and then went and stood a moment by
the window.
The soothing of the camphor had had its way. She had not
shaken sleep quite from her. Her eyes were closed again, and
she was still.
Richard delayed and waited. She thought he was coming,
and she fell asleep.
Then he put the candle out, and drew his feet out of his
slippers, and lay down beside her, quietly, in his clothes.
He was not easy about her, yet.
I tried to tell Richard about it, when we got home again,
out at the Farm.
But what could I tell him,?
Just that flash of thought ? Or all that that flash showed
me ? How could I make him see ?
It was what might have been ; nothing that was ; it was a
glimpse of good and evil ; good missed and forbidden, and so
evil ; evil that should never be.
I could make no words of it that should be true ; it was only
a word between God and me. A word that I must bear to
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 405
bear in the stillness. A thing that I must bear to know possi-
ble of myself, myself, Richard Hathaway's wife.
And then, what?
To go on, taking all his love ; giving him what I could.
The pain was, that this seemed all he wanted.
" It won't do to keep raking things up to see what they are.
That's your mistake, Anstiss ; I don't understand it. It's
only misery and excitement. I never believed in dragging out
evidences and experiences in religion. I don't believe in it any
more between man and wife. The more you look after things
and get anxious about them, the irTore it seems as if they
weren't there. Take it for granted. You believe in the Lord ;
believe in yourself, and in me."
Did he know did he remember he said the Lord's own
words ?
" We are married, and we must just go on."
That was what he answered when I said to him brokenly,
half questioning, half confessing :
" What if I knew better than ever, Richard, that I don't
give you half enough? That there is something in me I
might give?"
We were married, and we must just go on.
That was the way he said it. It seemed to shut me in, and
nail me down.
And 3 r et Richard was so good, and I meant to love him so !
Anybody would be tired of me, to hear me tell all this. No-
body would have patience.
I was tired of myself. Tired, and ashamed. But I wanted
to be true. I wanted Richard, at least, to know just what I
was.
He meant to do her good. He thought most of her, as he
always did. He set before her the plain fact of her life. He
would allow no weight to her fancies, her self-accusations.
But he kept back the sting they gave him.
" I suppose I know what she means; what she thinks she
means, just for the minute. But she doesn't, and she never
shall. I'll never understand it ; and she shall never have it to
406 . HITHERTO:
think of that I have understood it of her. It will all pass by,
so.
" A man might be a little crazy, even, and get over it, if he
never had it to think of that other people knew, or mistrusted.
That's where they give up.
" It shall be all right between Nansie and me.
" God help me if I've brought her here and should ever let
it go all wrong ! "
He sat on a stone in the shady Low Pasture ; he was on his
way down through his fields. He held his straw hat crushed
between his hands. There were knotted veins in his temples,
and there was a flush about his eyes.
Richard Hathaway's bright, kind face had hardly ever
looked like that.
Did shelinow what it had been to him to say those common-
place words that " shut her in and nailed her down"?
" We are married ; and we must just go on."
It needed little between these two. If he had said the
same thing in other fashion, the thing that was truly in his
faithful, enduring soul !
How did it differ, after all, from what Grandon Cope had
said :
" We must be patient in the rims he finds us in " ?
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 407
CHAPTER XXXVI,
HOPE'S WITNESS.
UNCLE ROYLE died that autumn.
After that, Aunt Ildy's life seemed to fc&^er in her, queiu-
lously, like a candle-flame whose wick has bumt through the
remnant of its nourishment, and dropped loose in its socket.
There was a ring of living left ; but the spirit flashed hither
and % thither within it, painfully, restlessly ; not knowing how
to join itself to or feed upon it again.
It never would feed upon it any more, strongly and steadily ;
it would only float and glimmer ; as that which remained
should melt and, crumble slowly around it ; and suddenly it
would go awa} r , into the dark.
We all saw how this would be. She saw it herself. She
waited for it, counting, secretly, her own pulses of pain, and
the weary time ; wondering when the flickering would be over.
Strong people break down so, when the break comes.
" She'll go soon," Lucretia said. " She's begun to look in
the glass. Figgeratively, I mean. She sees her own pudgicki-
ness ; and it aint so much to be seen,*neither, as it was ; but
folks sees over their shoulders, when they come to look. ' I
believe it's my crossness that keeps me,' she says to Hope one
day, when she couldn't stretch the sheet as tight and smooth
as a fire-board, to suit her. ' Just as vinegar does pickles.'
And I douno but it does. It's the vim, what there is of it."
The hardest thing in my life, that winter, was that Richard
would not intrude upon it.
I had my books and my thoughts ; my household cares
and interests ; he left me very much with these, going his own
quiet way, except as he could give me any practical help, or
as things of necessity concerned us mutually.
408 HITHERTO :
He was as kind as ever ; it was not avoidance ; it was
rather a great reserve, like a dammed-up stream. I myself
had thrown the bar across. I had told him I could not give ;
he would not demand.
We should "just go on."
Not that he was not tender either ; but he was not gladl} r ,
freely so.
He seemed to think he troubled me.
He made me feel as if I had crushed him down. He could
have taken no more exquisite way of punishing me.
I had complained that life was not enough. It was being
taken from me, even that which I had.
Even that ? I began to know, dimly, what I was losing.
I was all adrift. I had forfeited earthly love, and I had not
found God's.
I knew this, now. That I had only thought about it, seen
it beautiful from afar ; stood without, counting the stones of
the wall ; not looking for the door, that I might enter in.
What was I to do? Give up my life? Consider it failed,
lost, wasted; thrown away, utterly and forever? Give it up
here, at eight and twenty years? Call it judgment, the
rest of it, and conviction of sin ?
Give up his, also, and ruin it?
That way lay madness, hell.
The life beyond? The life that for one wild, wicked mo-
ment, I had thought I jras ready for, and that God was ready
to give me ?
How did I know? I said I had nol found God. What
could I expect of that life, having failed miserably in this?
What should come of the seed that was black-moulded in the
furrow?'
So I walked on, in a blind shadow.
My old life fell away from me ; the last sign and frame-
work of it went down, leaving me to stand alone in the life
that I had made.
Aunt Ildy died before the spring. She took cold, and the
doctor said it was pneumonia. That was the outside ailment.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 409
We knew when the wind came, "out of the sea," smiting the
one point of her narrowed, intense vitality, and when she
began to die. That is the point behind, which doctors never
do know.
Lucretia went away, down East, among her kindred.
John Eveleith hired the house and the store of me, married a
wife, and brought her there.
Hope came back to the Farm.
I took home Aunt Ildj^'s linen and silver, and all her house-
hold treasures. How strange that seemed ! Her spoons,
her pillow-cases and tablecloths, why, they had always
seemed augustly different from any I could ever have ! Hers
was real, old, solemn house-keeping. Mine was as a child's,
a make-believe. I wipe those teaspoons reverently now,
with the fear of her eyQ upon me.
It was brighter for having Hope again. It always was.
Out-doors,, and iu-doors ; weather, housework, needle-work,
books, all were pleasanter and cheerier.
Richard looked more as he used to do, before I came,
and worried him. Something of the old times crept back,
even across the spoiling I had made.
We had a book, one day, Hope and I ; a story we were
reading. " How real it seems, this living in books ! " I said.
"As if we opened some secret door, or looked down put of
some sky into a human world, seeing the whole of it ; know-
ing the whys, holding the spell, and the key, that we might
drop, or whisper, and help it all out with. Only that we can't
reach into a dream ! How strauge it is that books should
ever have been made ; that there should be such a life inside
our living ! That it should be so much to us, and yet that it
should be really nothing at all ! "
" It would have been stranger if the books had not been
made," said Hope. " Then there would have been something
in the world without any shadow or image. Because the
reading is true. There's always a reading like that ; and a
watching and an entering in ; and we're the stories. It's to
let us-know, and to learn us how."
410 HITHERTO:
" I wonder if anj'body is reading over me, over us" I
said, for I was impatient of the miserable " me."
" Yes, ever so many," answered Hope. " God is ; and the
'innumerable company ! ' I am, Anstiss."
" Read on, then. Turn over the leaf."
" God .turns over the leaves ; but a little wind raises them,
sometimes, and I standing by, you know can catch a
word, or a line, or the look of a page. I think I have seen
what is coming."
" Tell me then. There has no leaf turned over for ever so
long, Hope ; I have looked till the spelling is all strange ! "
" Then you have come out of the real reading. That is
what we have done when we begin to see the letters so. You
must go in again ; 3-011 must forget ; then you will see ; then
the leaf will turn. And you will. That is what I see for
you. I see, for all this 'heavy reading, close and packed
with hard thinking, that the little children always skip, the
story coming again ; things happening ; bright words ; it
looks ' pretty ' again ; it grows simple and easy. Anstiss,
there is love in it. There is love in you, dear, that you don't
half know of yet ; love that will ache, if you don't let it be
glad ; it must make you know, somehow. Never mind the
book and the leaves ; you are the book."
She flung it away as it were with a gesture of her hand.
She came over to me.
" I see you. And I know it is in you to be a sweet, joyful
woman, taking God's love out of the hand he sends it by, and
giving back that he has trusted you with in return. For him ;
for Richard ; and think ! he will never get it except from
you!"
She had come close to me, and knelt down beside me ; her
arm was round me ; her face looked into mine ; there were
tears in her glowing eyes.
" You see I know so well it is in you," she repeated.
" It is in me, Hope ; but it wants something ! It can't live !
He might believe, and I might believe ; the right, the need,
might be in each of us ; but if it is hushed up, if it wants a
language ! "
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 411
" Well ; He maketh even the dumb to speak. The word
shall not return to. Him void, but it shall prosper in the thing
whereto He sends it. You must believe that His word for you
is in Richard Hathaway's heart. You must be glad of it even
before it comes ; as you were of that little child before it
came, Anstiss. It will come in heaven, if it doesn't all come
here."
" Oh, that little child ! " I broke forth, crying. " It is as
if I never had it. I cannot think I ever did."
"Yes; you ever did," Hope answered, slowly, giving
me the thought as it came to her.
" The strangest time if it could be would be the time
that wasn't. But everything always was. You never did not
have little Richie ! "
" Hope ! You strange woman ! "
My tears dried, astonished.
" You see it is all so safe, from the beginning. "We can-
not miss of anything, or lose anything. That little, tender
love was with you, in you, all your life ; waiting. You.
just had the short sign of it, and then the cloud took it again.
' Our life is hid with Christ in God.' I've just thought
of it so! And God glorified him with the glory that he had
with him before the world was ! "
The light, instantly received, was in Hope's wonderful eyes.
" How do you get these things? " I asked her, marvelling ;
as the Jews asked the Lord.
" They come," she answered, simply.
412 HITHERTO:
CHAPTER XXXVII.
WHAT HOPE TOLD RICHARD.
HOPE came down into the long barn.
She had a little willow basket in her hand ; going to look
for eggs, in the great sweet mow.
Hope always found eggs ; just as she did her white, beauti-
ful thoughts. They were right there ; ready laid for her ;
how could she help it?
The search was " like something," as the hay-field had
been. In a wide sweetness and generousness and rest, won-
derful things lay hidden, put away for her to come and. find ;
things pure, like pearls ; with life in them, also. In the
secret places, and in the quietness.
There is something strangely pleasant and suggestive in
the stillness of a great country barn, when one is all alone in
it. The mysterious nearness comes about one that is only
felt when one is away, apart ; in some safe, beautiful hush.
Hope went up the steep, narrow, smooth-worn stairs, brown
and polished with much treading, and years of seedy plenty.
There was a space around the front, on the upper floor, past
the great window, leading over to the mangers. From this
the hay sloped up, filling the warm, fragrant chamber.
She went up a little way, climbing the elastic heap ; then
she sat down a minute, taking in the sweet companioning of
the loneliness ; she never liked to go for eggs in a liuriy.
Tken she heard movements by the mangers, away over
behind ; some one of the men was there, tossing down hay.
But presently came Richard's voice :
" Hope ! Is that you ? "
" Yes. I've come for eggs."
She heard him move around toward her, brushing the rust-
A STOUT OF YESTERDAYS. 413
ling hay as he pressed along. He approached slowly ; when
he came before her, he stopped, put one foot up on a low,
gathered ridge of the broken mow, leaned his arm across his
knee and polled out hay-stems, which he doubled and bent
and turned in his fingers.
" Hope ! tell me what to do," he said.
Hope's heart beat quick. She did not say " About what? "
as most would have done, to break a silence, and to lead him
on. She knew what it was.
" God will tell you what to do, Richard," she answered,
presently. "He does. You do do."
It is almost too simple and unfinished to write down. They
were the first words which came. The meaning and the feeling
overleaped them. They said a great deal to Richard Hatha-
way. There was a great deal more for him in Hope Devine's
heart, which neither they nor any words could say.
" I think I want to be told what to undo. I can't go back.
How can I make up ? "
" That isn't the word, Richard. You are laying up all the
time. You must just be, what you are ; and wait until she
sees. Then her heart will be all broken with love and repent-
ance one of these da}- s. It can't help it."
Hope's voice trembled.
" She grows thinner and thinner ; she worries, and blames
herself. There is a great growth in her that she wants to
give away, that she thinks she ought to give to me. And
I can't hold it. I'm a simple man, Hope; I can just live
on and do for her as I know how. It's like the story in the
Bible ; she hasn't where to bestow all her fruits and her goods ;
she needs to pull down her barns and build greater. I c]on't
know, Hope, but I ought to let her go ! "
" Richard ! "
" I don't mean to break everything up ; that isn't the way
of quiet people like us ; and I can't put her back, as I said.
But I might do something. Old Mr. and Mrs. Cope are going
to Europe by and by ; in the summer. I might let her go
with them. Wouldn't they have her ? "
" O you great heart!" cried Hope Devine, involuntarily.
414 HITHERTO :
" No," said Eichard, lifting for an instant eyes that had a
surprise upon their sadness. " Only honest. Only doing as
I would be done by, as near as I can."
" Only that," said Hope, with the same tone in her voice,
restrained.
"Would it be better?"
"No," said Hope, instantly. "Don't think it of her that
she would go ; and don't think it of yourself that all Europe
is any bigger or any better for her than you can be. Why,
Richard ! " she went on, lighting up ; " this is a beautiful
farm of yours, and worked and tended beautifully. And full,
all over, of kind, sweet things, pleasant to have, and that
people must have every day ; but after all it's only the top of
it ! You don't think you've got at, or brought out, all there is !
It's yours, for all that any man can say, way down to the
very middle ; to the rocks, and coals, and fires. And think
of the things that are there ; the things that are laid away !
Whenever they are wanted, they will be found and come to
light. Now, the farm is the best, perhaps. In other places
the ground is tossed and torn up ; and there is no quiet, small
planting and growing ; but gold is coming out, or iron, or
coal. There are men's minds and lives like that. God orders
it, and it is good. But he has put yours here, to wait awhile.
Yet you're as rich, and as deep, and as strong as they are ;
and it's out of the strength of the deep things that the pleas-
ant things grow. It's all in you, Richard ; and if she looks
for it, she will find it someday! I suppose that is what
people are married for ; that they may take a great, long
time, away beyond the world, perhaps ; if it were all
made out and measured from the first, what would the living
be for? It is a will be; it isn't an is."
" Sometimes it begins sooner, though ; I don't want all her
life to be a hungry waiting. Hope ! I think people say it
without much thinking sometimes I think I could lay down
my life for her."
He said it very gravely and gently ; there was no exclama-
tion point in his voice ; it was a plain, true period.
" I think you could. ' Greater love hath no man than this,'
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 415
Richard. And love is the greatest of all. You two love one
another."
"We two?"
Something in those slow, separate words, and that empha-
sis, touched for Hope a yet higher chord of perception.
" And yet two do not make a perfect love," she said.
It was strange how she sat there, this girl, saying what she
had not had it in her mind to say a minute before ; speaking,
truly, as the Spirit taught her at the instant how. Every act,
every word, eveiy perception in life, brought her always,
surely, to the next ; she stumbled and she failed at nothing,
because she walked in the light.
It was strange, too, that she sat there, saying these things
to this man, whom she might have loved and married. She
just gave as it was given to her ; as she was sent to do.
Richard Hathaway looked up again.
" Two do not make a perfect love? "
He did not understand. He thought, instantly, of his little
lost Richie ; of the dead Richie, buried in Broadfielcls
church-yard out there, over the hill ; of the vacancy in their
home ; of what might have been between them two.
But this girl did not mean that. She would not tell him
of this loss, this lack, in such manner.
His eyes, his grave, lifted brows, questioned and waited.
"No. It must be joined. It must be a whole thing, and
perfectly beautiful, before it is done. It must be ' in the
Lord.' "
Hope's face was like the face of an angel. She saw afar off.
The word, that fed her always, came, rushing in upon her
spirit, like the tongues of old. She saw things that she did
not really know. She spoke of what she had never thought
of or been taught.
" Isn't that what the triangle means? Isn't it only because
some line of light comes down to each, that there must run a
line between ? Why, I don't know anything but the name of
it ; but I think that is what Trigonometry stands for ; the
signs of the lines that measure all through heaven, between
the souls ! Three lines are the least that can make a form of
416 HITHERTO:
anything. Three sides make the prism, and divide all the
beauty. Isn't it everywhere like a network of beautiful
threads, the love that is between each two of us, and be-
tween each one of us and God; holding us all together?
Isn't that where the thought of the Trinity came from ?
God, arid his Son, and the world ; and the Spirit, reaching all
through? For, He loveth the Son; and He so loveth the
world. And then, if the world will love the Sou ; it is
whole, it is one, it is safe again ! "
She forgot, half, that she was talking. Her mind sprang
from point to point. She turned, as it were, the ciystal of
her precious thought in her hands, and the lights flashed forth,
as from the facets of a diamond.
Heart and voice thrilled all through when the last came ;
came and was spoken as instantly as the rest ; but the tone
lowered and intensified, and the eyes looked more afar, and
the face was yet more radiant.
Richard stood still ; his head bowed a little, as if a prayer
had been made in a church ; he was hushed with surprise, too ;
people do not often talk like that ; he had no answer, cer-
tainly.
Besides, there was always in him the old feeling, grown of
early training in the New England notions of religion, that
he had no right ; that he was not a participant ; he let it go
by him, with a wistfulness perhaps, but that was all ; as he
le't the cup of the communion go by him in the church.
" Hope," he said, presently, speaking from this feeling of
withoutness, " I have never experienced religion."
"Yes, you have," said Hope, quickly. "Everybody has.
No ! Nobody has i I mean it is the will be. It takes
forever, Richard. If yon have only begun to be married, how
can you more than have begun to live with God?"
" But there must be the beginning. The conviction, the
giving up, 3'ou know ; all that ; and I have never come to it.
I am a plain fellow, Hope ; I can't go deep in anything. I
must just live on."
" ' He that loveth, dwelleth in God, and Ho in him ! '
'And if in anything 3-0 be otherwise minded, God shall reveal
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 417
even this unto you.' It will all come, Richard ; just as sure
as you now love every living thing.
" ' When I am kind to others, then
I know myself forgiven.'
" Some old hymn says that, and you make me think of it."
Tears stood in Richard Hathaway's eyes.
He straightened himself then ; flung away the bits of hay
he had been breaking and measuring, and said to Hope as he
made a movement to go, and end the talk :
" I don't know as I've got hold of anything ; but it seems
as if I had. You make things look somehow different. If
there was only more in me "
" I tell you it is all in you. You are greater than you know
you are," said Hope, rising and coming down beside him.
" And if it wasn't, you know what He told the woman, l Go,
call your husband, and come hither.' It's all in Him. And
when we are close to Him, we are close together, and there's
just one giving for both. And the lines are joined, and it
makes, why, I remember now, Richard, there's a triangle
in music! it makes a clear beat of joy ! "
Richard Hathaway put forth both his hands, and took hers
in them.
" The first thing you ever told me, Hope, was your name.
And you've been telling it to me ever since;" he said.
Then he let her go, and turned away, down the steep, old
stairs.
27
418 HITHERTO :
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
BLIND FERNS.
ONE day, that spring, Grandon Cope rode over to the
Farm.
He had some business with Richard, and went down after
him through the fields.
He brought also some volumes of Ruskin for me, and when
he came back to the house, he stopped to tell me about them.
"You will thoroughly enjoy Ruskin," he said. " He goes
where you will most delight to follow. He finds the thought
that is in things. He does not stop at an}' cold analysis of
art, or technicality of science ; he touches, reverently, the
great secrets; the Word that is in the world. He tells you
of beautiful impulses and limits in tree growths, and their
life-instincts seem to you like souls. You stand with him
among the mountains, and you feel God."
" Sometimes," I said, " I almost think I had better keep
out of the mountains."
I suppose my trouble was in my face, and in my voice.
.Grandon Cope looked at me kindly, inquiringly.
" I don't bring it down. If I were right and true, I should
not need to go so high or deep. And things would not puzzle
me so."
I had my fingers upon the books, searching idly among
their leaves.
" ' To bring Christ down from above, or up out of the
depths ? ' No ; we know we do not need that. Yet I think
such apprehensions as Ruskin's help and kindle. I think
they are a great good in the world."
" It seems as if I went off, alone, after the best, with a kind
of presumption. I ought to find it and live it, among them all.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 419
Eight here, with Hope, and Martha, and Richard, every da} T .
Hope does. She doesn't need great things. It is always in
her mouth, and in her heart. I feel mean and false beside
her, pretending to high things, and reaching nothing."
"Hope would like this, too," said Mr. Cope. I think he
hardly knew how to understand me.
" Hope has a right to like it. She is real and beautiful, all
through. But I am not thanking you, Mr. Cope. I do,
very much ; and I shall not be able to help reading, and en-
joying, whether I deserve or not. But I wish," I said
this after a pause, "it would be so much less selfish, I do
wish Richard cared ! "
He saw through my miserable dissatisfactions, then. He
saw where my life halted. He laid his hand upon the books,
which I had left.
"Dear Mrs. Hathaway," he said, earnestly, " don't read
this, or think this, or anything, if it makes you seem farther
from your husband. You can come near to nothing nobler or
truer than he is. Reading and writing are about the Eternal
Beauty. Living and loving are close to and in it. There are
spirits of love, and spirits of wisdom ; and the spirits of love
are nearest. Heart-truth is the realit}^ ; thought-truth only
the reflection. ' Blood is thicker than water.' These things
are water only ; drops of the water of life, maj-be ; but "the
blood the love is the life. Jesus came by the water, and
the blood ; but it was his blood that he gave for the life of
the world. Richard Hathaway has received of this. He is
blood-related to it all. I am filled with reverence when I
think what such a grandly real and simple nature will come
to in the kingdom of heaven. It was of that childlike direct-
ness, that unconscious, great out-living, that the Lord
said ' Take heed that ye despise it not ; for it doth always
behold the Face of my Father.' "
Brave, and true, and generous. Spoken as one soul to an-
other ; as few men could or would have spoken to a woman.
A common, indifferent man might have been contemptuous
of what he saw in me, if, indeed, it could have been shown
to him, or he could have understood ; a true man, self-con-
420 HITHERTO :
scious and timid, might have shrunk and been afraid ; a sel-
fish a bad a tempted one, well, women have been
near such in their moments of need and bewilderment, and
what was I that I should have been safer than they?
He dared to tell me not to despise. He dared to touch
close my hidden unsoundness ; to show me Richard, my hus-
band, as he stood, noble and beautiful, to his perception, and
ought to stand to mine. He could see, not a want, but a pure
and large awaiting in him, that should be surely and glori-
ously filled ; he could bid me discern and wait beside it ; if,
haply, I might be worthy yet to dwell anigh when the river
of God's fulness should flow through.
He dared to do it instantly ; to strike to the very core and
marrow of the truth ; to speak to me as Christ spoke to the
Woman of Samaria.
" Did you ever see the blind ferns in spring? As they are
looking now, under your walls ? "
I had never seen or noticed them so.
" We are all like that," he said. " Folded up, more or less,
according, perhaps, to the tenderness and beauty in us,
till we get above the earth and stones, safe out into the upper
air and glory. It is the dream we stand in, side by side, as
they do. Some of us have opened a few fronds, quivering,
half unfurled ; wondering and shrinking among the roots
and thorns ; some stand tall and strong, reserved; kept for a
larger and more perfect grace. You must go out and see
your ferns, Mrs. Hathaway. They will tell }ou many
things."
He made me ashamed, and yet he paid me a reverence. I
was worth being spoken to so. He believed that I desired
the truth, and would bear it. And Richard Hathaway could
bear being spoken of. There was nothing in him no lack
or absence that needed to be ignored.
I know I should have hated Grandon Cope if he could have
spoken otherwise. That is why I cannot quite understand
what happens sometimes, in just such perplexities of women,
and just such friendships, apparently, of men.
I went out that next day to see the ferns.
A STOJIY OF YESTERDAYS. 421
They, stood there, all along under the orchard wall, in
nooks between the broad, rough stones ; on turfy knolls about
the rugged roots of trees.
Hooded, and bowed ; a folded grace, an unrevealed gloiy.
They were like spectres, chrysalids ; unmoving in the soft
spring air ; unknowing themselves or each other ; rolled into
that strange, uncouth form, giving no sign of what they
should be ; fitted only for pushing up into the light that
should draw forth their tender, wonderful beauty.
Here and there was one just awaking ; looking timidly
round into the new world out of its sleep ; looking upon the
blind ones close by, tarrying their change, that was close by
also. These saw it not in themselves, what it should be, nor
in those, what it was already. They were the freed and the
unfreed.
Two or three days more, what mattered it, the difference
or the waiting, then? two or three days more, a few roll-
ings of the great Sun through the deep and generous blue,
touching patiently leaf after leaf on his spring-path over the
greening latitudes, and they should stand in feathery
prime, saluting each other with broad, delicate fronds ; heap-
ing high, beautiful banks of plumy verdure, like clouds of em-
erald mist rolled up around the stanch old pillars of the trees,
and about the pale, gray rocks.
I stood and read.
" We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed."
Nothing shall sleep, or wait, forever. "We might be patient
for ourselves. We might be believing for each other. We
might be more gladly conscious of the blessed world to come,
which is only a world of light and air about us that we are
blind to ; into which some, yet rooted near us, have opened
out their perfected life ; opened out into God, in whom also
we bide, and shall unfold.
But is this blind biding all, for this world? Are we all
fern growths? Is that what people are married for? What
they love and long for? Only to stand, and reach, and grope,
side by side, and still alone? I could not make it answer
everything. All living did not seem to me like this.
422 HITHERTO:
A step came up behind me. It was Richard.
He asked me what I was doing there ; asked me gently,
with the pleasure in his voice there always was at first, when
he came upon me anywhere, not having looked for me.
"Are we two like that?" I questioned suddenly, pointing
to the ferns.
It was too sudden. I had no business to speak so ; I did
not mean to. I do not know why I did ; out of the recoil of
my thought, instead of from its first true, fresh impulse. How
could he see anything but the folded solitariness, the
estrangement ?
His face changed. The pleasantness died out of it ; quenched,
as I had the horrible power to quench it, and the strange
fatality to do, in those days.
" I do not know, Anstiss. I cannot follow you in all your
fancies. I think it is damp for you to be standing here, and
that 3 r ou had better come in."
I turned and went in with him. What was the use ?
I came down out of my fancies.
I made a tansy-pudding for dinner that day ; the delicate
spring dainty that Richard was fond of.
I tried to be happy in the homely, wifely way.
I wonder if he saw that I tried. I think he did.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 423
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE "NEXT" FOR HOPE.
WHAT was the reason that nothing took hold, or stayed by?
That I could look at these things, see them, read them, rejoice
even against myself at the truth that was in them, and then
turn away into rny life, finding it just the same, making it
no different ?
'I know now. I began my Bible at the wrong end. I looked
in all things for an apocalypse, instead of for a simple gospel.
What Richard's mother had said, years before, was true then,
and had been true in all my life, ever since. I forgot Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John. I had got to go back and read
through all these, before I could come to Revelation.
I looked at the truth, and I saw it lovely ; but I did not
purely and guilelessly enter in. I looked at God. I did not
live, like a child, in the great, safe Heart of my Father. I
beheld through some of his beautiful signs, as it were my own
face in a glass, and went away, forgetting. I did not know
that the letter alone, rich and glorious though it might be,
should kill me ; that the dear and intimate spirit only should
give me life. I reached after knowledges ; I brought back
treasures from afar ; then I was like the laden camel at the
gate of the city ; he should sooner go through the Needle's
Eye than I should, that way, find the kingdom and the peace
everlasting.
All the while, with a love the tenderer for its pain, the truer
for its denial, the life at my side was speaking, teaching me ;
saying always, " And yet show I unto you a more excellent
way."
The " might have been ! " That stood between. It did,
it did !
424 HITHERTO:
Maud Miiller was not the first.
Thousands of women, good, or meaning to be good,
turning swiftly away from the very shadow of evil, have
caught, without looking for it, the strange side-glimpse of this
shadow, sent from some far-off or far-back shining.
I knew it might have been. I could not help the knowl-
edge.
I have thought it out in the days since then ; the days long
since these others that I call up now ; in 'those I should not
have dared to think of it deliberately ; yet it was in those
days that the secret perception came. Did I sin the sin of the
heart? I asked and answered myself this, afterward.
The deeper I went on into life, the better I knew, however
secretl}', how, with a very little, all might have been different.
It would have seemed to me in those first years, long ago,
before either of us married, such a strange and great and won-
derful thing to have had a love come to me like Grandon
Cope's, that I never looked for it ; never dreamed a dream
from which the awakening would have been shipwreck of hope.
It only passed by me near enough for the light upon its golden
wings to dazzle me ; to leave a pain that I hardly understood,
except that it was an ache for a time afterward, in looking
upon duller things.
But it did not seem strange to me to have his friendship,
now. I knew that he was strongly drawn to me ; that he found
much in me answering to what I found in him. I knew that
it would not have been utterly strange and impossible, given
other conditions, that we should have come to be that to each
other which man and woman may be, but which, out of the
myriad men and women who catch at life haphazard, as it
seems, the myriad men and women born and placed and
drifted here and there, apart on the earth and in the genera-
tions, apart by little jolts of misdirection like a blinding fault
in a mine when the lead may be close by, hardly two" of a,
lifetime ever do come to be perfectly ; all this thrust itself
into my consciousness, deep down, among the things we know
and will not know.
I knew that, being true, it was manifest to him also ; that
A STORY OF YKSTKHDAYS. 425
his being upright, and great of soul, and pure of purpose, did
not hinder, could not hinder, in Grandon Cope some glimpse
of this ; it only took away some of the possibilities that re-
mained.
There are unspoken perceptions like this ; there are things
we shall be able to look at in the light of the life to come,
that we may not look at now.
But was it a wrong, a horrible mistake, my marrying
Richard? Where was the sure instinct, the spiritual corre-
lation, if he could love me so, " with every thought and
fibre of him, " and I not give him back the like?
Plow came Grandon Cope to love Augusta Hare ?
If these are mistakes and wrongs, they are mistakes and
wrongs that are every day allowed to be.
Out of all my life, up to this day, I have found but one
solution. We make mistakes, or what we call such. The na-
ture that could fall into such mistake exactly needs, and in the
goodness of the dear God is given, the living of it out. And
bej'ond this, I believe more. That in the pure and patient
living of it out we come to find that we have fallen, not into
hopeless confusion of our own wild, ignorant making ; but
that the finger of God has been at work among our lines, and
that the emerging is into his blessed order ; that he is forever
making up for us our own undoings ; that he makes them up
beforehand ; that he evermore restoreth our souls.
But I could not think this then.
I could not even live back into what I had lost. Richard
was too true, too simple, to understand the vibrations of a
double- aspected life ; to see how I could sometimes put away
that which was myself, to rest in a quieter, a safer and more
bounded self; how his changeless and faithful strength held
me and satisfied me there, as it always had done ; how I
longed to be truly and wholly one with him.
He was tender of me, as if he had done me some great
harm that no tenderness could make up. Our life moved on
with an outer peacefulness.; nobody would have thought that
we were ill, or half, assorted. But the gladness, the youth,
were gone out; we were a man and woman walking OB through
426 HITHERTO:
the middle wilderness ; he had followed me out of the Eden,
and kept loyally by my side ; and I had only him.
One day, Mrs. Cope herself came out from South Side to
see me. She went little from home, in these days ; she was
become an invalid. Her ill health had crept from a negative
to a positive condition; it had been, for years, always,
nearly, a mere absence of robustness ; of late, people said
she was " failing ; " and her physician counselled change,
which had often been of benefit before. She wanted the sea ;
she had better go to Europe again.
" I want a great thing of you," she said to me. " A very
generous co-operation. I want you to help me to get Hope
Devine's consent to go abroad with me. Laura and Kitty
have their homes and their cares ; Augusta and Grandon will
perhaps come out and join us for a time, somewhere ; but there
are the little boys, and I could not wish, either, to keep them
restricted to our quiet plans. I need some one with me :ill
the time ; not a servant, or a nurse, but a friend ; just such a
friend as Hope would be. Will you say a word for me?
Will you spare her ? "
How " all these things " were being added to. Hope ! How
her life flowered out, without her taking thought !
I could recognize a beautiful thing ; a thing that should be ;
I was glad for her with all my heart.
" I am sure she will go," I said. " I shall not be able to
have any merit in it. I will call her down to see you."
Hope was upstairs, putting away linen ; we had been look-
ing it over together ; she had taken out some to mend ; it was
wprk that she did delicately.
" Hope," I said, coining up behind her, and laying my
hands on her shoulders, "you will have to put back those
tablecloths to wait for my darning. There has some other
work turned up for you to do. Mrs. Cope has it for you.
Will you come down and see her ? "
"Mrs. Cope! It is some pleasure! I know } T onr face,
Anstiss ! "
" I don't believe you do, upside down ! "
She was looking up at me, as I stood behind her, she sit-
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 427
ting on the low cricket before the press drawer, with all the
sorted piles about her on the floor.
" It is ' what is going to be done with you next,' " I said,
thoughtfully. I began to be curious for Hope Devine. Every
turn of her life was a sure move in an unspoiled game ; a
beautiful development; a touch whether it were a shade
or a high light upon a picture growing into perfectness,
upon a canvas without blot or blunder, under a Master-Hand.
Then she put from her what lay upon her lap, and arose.
"It is something very serious, very important, "she
said. " Something with an ought, perhaps an ought not, in
it, Anstiss."
So she turned to the looking-glass for a moment, passed her
band lightly across her shining hair, either way, took off her
little white apron, and we went down.
Mrs. Cope herself told her what she had come for.
She sat silent at first, when she had heard ; she lifted and
lowered her e3^es, glancing here and there unconsciously, as if
she looked for something ; she Avas searching in her mind for
the impediment it seemed as if there must be. Could it be so
easy and so plain that she should say, right off, " Yes, I
will do this beautiful thing. I will go with you to Europe " ?
" Why ! I don't see yet any reason why not, Mrs.
Cope ! "
She could not have told her readiness, her appreciation,
better than by that surprised allowing.
"But then, I have only begun to see any of it!" she
added, laughing. " How quickly things do happen ! "
" Yes ; when they happen right," said Mrs. Cope. " You
have not asked when, or how long. We shall sail in a month
from New York for Southampton ; we shall be gone a year,
perhaps two. It will depend on health. We mean to go first
to the Isle of Wight ; then to Paris, and later in the season to
the south of France, to stay awhile among the P} T renees ; in
the winter, we shall be in Italy ; and next summer, if all goes
well, in the Swiss mountains and in Germany. We shall
stay quietly in each successive place. It will be living about ;
not travelling much. Journeys are short in Europe."
428 HITHERTO :
"T cannot think how it should corne to me ! " said Hope.
" You may have much disappointment, after all," said Mrs.
Cope. " I may be ill, and need a good deal from you. You
may be in the midst of beautiful things and have to forego
them. We cannot tell an3*thing that may happen in two
years. I only ask you to share my chances, and to help me
through."
" Dear Mrs. Cope," said Hope, earnestly and simply, " it
will be a beautiful thing to be with you. And if I can help
3 T ou, or do for you, I hope you. will always be sure that
nothing can really disappoint me except not answering in
that. I should not dare to go if it were not for that. It
would be too much to take. Two years are a long time.
Can you and Richard spare me for two years, Anstiss?"
" I am glad to have something that I also can do for Mrs.
Cope," I answered. " Only it is not my doing. I could have
no right at all to keep yon. I can only give you up most
cheerfully to her. And Richard, you know how he gives."
"I think it is an ought," said Hope, with tears in her eyes
that were like sunshiny rain. "An ought and a may
together."
All her life was.
I told her so. " Trouble has nothing to do with you, " I
said. " I do not think it ever came to you, to stay."
" It may have brushed by me, in the dark," said Hope.
"We were busy after that, in getting her ready.
When we had let her go, we .were, for almost the first time,
left to our own uninterrupted life together. All the old was
gone from me, as I said before ; but when the home at New
Oxford first broke up, it had given us Hope ; now we had
quite passed over into what had never really begun before ;
the sole thing we were sure of, the belonging, utterly and
only, to each other. This hardly ever befalls, so early, with
married people. The change comes slowly, to most ; it takes
years of gradual happening ; and all the time, ordinarily, the
new life is enlarging, replacing the old before it drops away.
With Richard and me, there had been so little to change.
Augusta and her husband travelled that summer, as usual ;
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 429
they were at the sea-shore, with their children ; they went to
Lake George and Saratoga ; they stayed with the Allard
Copes, at Edge water, on the Hudson.
We were busy ; Richard in his fields, I in the house, and
in my dairy, with Martha ; our story went on, underneath,
but there was no story to tell. Why should there be a story,
when we were old, settled, married people ; married those
nine years, nearly?
The only person who saw through this " well enough " of
the outward was Nurse Crykc.
We went over there, one day.
She elbowed me aside, up into a corner, when Richard was
untying the horse.
" It isn't all straight," she said, standing at right angles, to
face rne with her exclusive organ of expression. " You and
he aint old enough for this." She lifted up the shoulder and
the flexed arm, slightly, as one might the brows, in question-
ing significance.
" I only told you he was part Grandison, you know. I
told you you couldn't have the Lord God all in one piece.
But you'd better make much of the piece you've got. Some-
how, the spring's gone out of Richard Hathaway. He's flatted
down. And that signifies with a man, more than it does with
a woman."
She sent me &w&y with this.
I knew that Richard had not been quite well. The heats
had been oppressive, and he had worked hard. He never
spared himself. And lately, he had, once or twice, had dys-
pepsia; a strange thing, for such pure vigor as his. I did
not know that that was how worry begins to kill a man.
Begins a long way off, perhaps ; it has to, when there is no
weak spot nearer the life.
Richard's life, splendid as his physical manhood was, was a
tender thing ; a thing to suffer, like a woman's ; as some
women's cannot suffer. Was there a spring deadened ?
A fearful shudder ran through me as the question pressed
home. I drew nearer him, sitting beside him in the low,
roomy old chaise. We were riding through the wooded road.
430 HITHERTO :
" Richard, dear! Are you quite well?"
How his face lightened as he turned round ! I always spoke
kindly to Richard ; it was not that ; but my heart went out in
the sudden anxiousness of that asking, and he felt it ; he who
seemed, ordinarily, content without much manifestation ; to
take for granted, and just to go on.
" Why, yes, Nansie ! Why ? "
" Oh, I don't think you are ! Nurse Cryke doesn't think
you look well. And you're all I've got in the whole world ! "
He did not take it to mean so much as it did ; it would be
hard to persuade such delicate humbleness as his, once having
turned it back upon itself.
He put his arm about me, though ; it made him glad, as far
as it went ; and he was pitiful of me.
" Poor little woman ! " he said. " You are lonely. But
you needn't begin to borrow trouble about me. Nurse Cryke
had better keep her elbows down. I'm well. And I don't
think "
There was a wonderful sweetness in his voice, but he did
not finish what he had begun to say.
" I don't think, if I wasn't, I could ever give up and go,
while you wanted me."
This was what came up in his heart, and what he had begun
to say. But it was put back. . It was left upon the Silent
Side.
A STOUT OF YESTERDAYS. 431
CHAPTER XL.
UNDERTOW.
" O Mis' HATH.IWAY ! " cried Martha, meeting me at the-
door. " There's awful news ! Jabez has been in to New
Oxford, and. he see the Copes' man from South Side, so there
aint no kind o' doubt about it, I don't suppose. I declare
I don't know nothin' how to tell you, or what you'll say !
Come into the settin'-room, any way, and lay off your bonnet
first, and take it comfortable. "Well there ! it's the doom o'
livin', and we can't tell, any of us, when our end will be ! "
I walked into the sitting-room, to gain the time. The news
was almost told. Except for the answer to the fearful question,
"Who?"
That I stood still to ask her, though I trembled from head
to foot.
" Don't touch the blinds," I cried. She was throwing them
open, as a surgeon might do, to get full light for some terrible
operation.
Martha had that strange relish for the dreadful which is
only satisfied with the last detail, and with watching every point
of its effect. " All the particklers, and how they all took it,"
were what she must know, if such a thing must needs hap-
pen.
I pulled my bonnet-strings away from her, as if she had
been a hangm.an, when she came fumbling at my throat to
loosen them and make me ready, to the last point, for the
stroke.
" I can hear it as I am, Martha. What has happened ? "
I thought of Hope. Truly, I thought of her first. I
thought also of Grandon Cope. They were the two of whom
432 HITHERTO :
South Side news ill news would come closest and most
terrible.
" It was down at Cape May. They'd gone there with the
other Copes, and some folks from New York. They went in
bathing, or swimming, or something, all together ; and she
went too far "
She!
The next thing I knew of Martha, she had got sal volatile
at my nose, and my hair and my bonnet-strings were all wet.
She had tipped me back in the great rocking-chair, and put
the hearth-brush under the rockers.
" For gracious sake, Mis' Hathaway ! Do come to, afore
he gets in ! There, as true as I live, I thought you was
dead gone ! "
" I was only dizzy for a minute ; you frightened me so.
Tell me the rest."
" I'm a blessed saint if I do. "Why, I hadn't begun ! I
never see anybody take anything so. But it is awful, that's
a fact."
" Martha, tell me every word. You are frightening me to
death. Was it Mrs. Cope? Mrs. Grandon Cope?"
" I suppose you will have it, now. But I thought you could
'abore it a little better. Yes ; it was Mrs. Graudon Cope ;
she that was Augusta Hare. She's always had things hap-
penin' to her that nobody else ever did, and now this is the
cap-sheaf ! "
"She isn't dead!"
" She's gone," said Martha, solemnly. " The first thing
they knew was she wasn't there. Something sucked her
under, some kind of a tide, they say. Or else, it might
have been the cramp."
" Let me up, Martha ! "
She took the hearth-brush away, and let the chair return to
its natural position.
I sat still a minute, with my face in my hands.
"Is that all?"
I thought they must have tried to save her ; I thought some
one else misrht have
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 433
It was awful enough ; but was Martha keeping any more
horrors back?
" Yes. That's all they've heerd as yet. They were watch-
ing for the body, miles along all down the shore. They're
in hopes the tide will bring it in."
"O Richard! Augusta Cope is dead ! Drowned at Cape
May ! " He had heard, from Jabez. He had come in to
me.
I burst out crying then. I could cry for Augusta. I think
if it had been Hope, or Augusta's husband, if either of them
had gone out of the world, I should have bled slowly, at my ,
heart.
" Poor little Nansie ! You have a great deal to bear."
Why didn't he say " my little Nansie ! " as he used to do?
He had left that off.
Many days after, Richard took me over to South Side.
Grandon Cope had come back with his wife's body.
There in the pretty garden-parlor she lay, in a closed cof-
fin.
Shut away, forever. Bruised, dead.
On the black velvet, that fell to the floor around her, lay
flowers, lilies, pure white carnations, tube-roses.
I went in alone.
I shut the door, and stood in the silence. That was what
she was in the midst of, now. Silence, mystery. A great
secret hushed with her, forever. The greatest, thing that
ever happened to her was the thing she never could recount.
It was the strangest to me, of all. That which she, only, had
known ; that which she could never utter.
How she had gone down ; how the great, stealthy grasp of
the mighty undertow had taken her ; how the wild sea had
surged in at her ears when she went under ; what she had seen
in her soul in the luminous instants of going ; how the two
worlds touched ; how she slept ; how she waked. Only dumb-
ness.
She was sublime, now; sublime as the stars in their
silences.
28
434 HITHERTO :
There were words said for her ; her name went up to God ;
her soul stood with him and heard it.
Wife, mother, she had been here ; they prayed for her
husband and her little children. "What was her new name
there ?
I could not think with the prayers. I could only think
of the strangeness.
That she should not come back, and tell ! That all this
could bo, and she be so grandly quiet !
Was she changed, or was she the same self, elsewhere?
Were they gathering round her above, hearing that wonderful
death-journey?
Martha said the same thing, in blunter, less reverent
fashion.
" I can't get over expectin' her to come in, and talk it all
over. It seems as though she couldn't do nothin' without
tellin' folks how ! But there ! I . dare say, if 'taint
wicked to think of it, it's half over heaven by this time ! "
Grandon Cope was very grave and calm. The shock, the
horror, were over before we saw him.
How much ivas over for him ! The life-experiment tried
and ended. Joy, or disappointment, or quiet acquiescence ;
hopes repressed or hopes fulfilled ; pleasantness, discipline ; all
these done with ; all arrested just where the}' were, with the
It is enough ! that onl}- One Breath can utter.
He came over to the Farm ; he came to us for quiet friend-
ship. He brought his little boys, and led them out into the
pleasant fields. He was very tender with them.
Richard was tender, too, with the motherless ones. He took
them down into the woods and out upon the river. We all
went, in the boat, up into the shadows and stillness.
We talked of her ; of her brightness and graciousness ; of
her smooth, kind way, that made everybody easy with her.
There are always beautiful things that we can say of the
dead.
I could not tell, now, what had been wanting, or wrong in,
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS.
Augusta. I do not kn6w of any positive mischief, or flagrant
selfishness, that she had ever been guilty of; and there was
much in her facile, politic ways, her infinite social tact, that
made a peace and a sunniness in outward things, wherever
she was. But it was not like Hope Devine's sunniness.
Augusta smoothed life, in the little circle that radiated from
herself; Hope infused a living blessedness, and induced new
centres.
Yet I wondered if " blessed are the peace-makers " might
not include, in its broad benison, even such a comfort-giving
as Augusta Cope's.
Grandon Cope told us he should take his boys and go out
to Europe.
His mother's health, he feared, was hardly better. They
would be in Florence for the winter, and he should establish
himself near them, and give his time to them and to the
teaching of his sons. He would be likely to remain abroad
a good while. In a }-ear or two, the boys would be old
enough to be placed at the Sillig Instituted Vevey, which
was what he had always intended for them.
" I must do all I can," he said, talking with me in the little
parlor, the day that he had brought them over for their last
visit to the Farm. They were out everywhere, as usual, with
Richard.
" I must do all I can for them. If they cannot have the
best thing, home, they shall have the next best, a large
piece of the full world to gather fruit in. They shall have
art, and history, and language off the trees ; with the juice in
them ; not boxed up and dried. One cannot be uncheerful,
or unsatisfied, Mrs. Hathawa} 7 , with other lives to reach out
through, and to receive with."
" I count you happy," I said, gravely and earnestly.
" Rarely happy, Mr. Cope."
" You count me rarely happy? " he repeated.
" Yes ; I do. Your way is so clear before you, the thing
you ought to do ; and you are so strong to do it, alwaj-s. And
then it may seem a strange thing to say, or I may say it
strangely but to have come to the end the earthly end
436
even of a tie, an affection, safely ; without great shipwreck or
mistake ; even in losing, it seems to me that is a joy. We do
stumble so ; every close relation is such a responsibility ;
such a possibility of fearful negligence or wrong ; we may
hurt hearts so, and hinder souls ! It frightens me to live,
sometimes."
" Do you think I feel that I have done all well? That I
have made no mistake or failure? Do you suppose it has
always been clear before me ? Do you suppose that memory
is clean and unaccusing, now?"
" I think you have been true and strong ; that is all men
and women can be. I think she is safe, and that you can
look back in peace, and forward in gladness. It seems to me
that that is all this world can help us to. The Now is always
mixed and clouded."
" Not if we take it simply as the ' now ; ' not if we do
not ourselves mix it. We mix it with our have beens, or our
* might have beens, or our by and b} T . God means it simply
for now ; the ' manna of to-day.' "
" I cannot separate it ; that is where you are so strong. I
cannot tell what ' now ' is, when all that has come to it, and
all that may come of it, is taken out. I cannot even take it
always as the ' now ' that I was truly meant to come to. IIow
do I know? I have made it, greatly, for myself; for others,
too ; and I may have made it very badly. The worst ' might
have beens' are those that we ourselves have thrust aside, or
changed, or passed unheeded."
"God knows a thousand 'might have beens' where we
know one ; he can look at them all patiently, because this
is the blessedness he knows a thousand ' may be's ' also !*
Did 3 r ou ever think what his thought of us must be ? "
" Sometimes I do not see how he can bear to think of us
at all."
" Yet every one of us is a thought of his, or else we
should not be. See here ! I wonder if I can tell you ; I
wonder if I can tell myself, in words, what it has seemed like
when it has come closest. Did you go and look at those
blind ferns ? "
A STORY OP YESTERDAYS. 437
"Yes."
I wondered that he had recollected.
"I think of those because they are such wrapped-up
thoughts ; that is, because we can see the wrapping so, and
we can watch the unfolding. But consider how far back the
thought begins ; with the little seed one among a million
under the tender frond ; how it waits in that, how it falls with
it, for not one of these, even, can fall without your Father.
How, all through the pregnant, quickened earth, beside every
particle of its dust, nearly, lies something that has life, and
that, therefore, God's thought must lie close alongside of
and within. Think that whenever a little blade or leaf comes
up, it comes up in tender evidence, because it simply could
not have been there without him. Think how his Word, so,
makes all 'the world, and has gone out to the ends of the.
earth. Can you see? Can you believe?"
"I don't know," I answered. "I only know it is warm
and beautiful. I don't know how much I do believe with
my heart."
He looked in my eyes earnestly. I think he knew what I
meant. I think he saw the glow that came from somewhere,
meeting the truth.
He went on.
" Think of our human selves. If God so clothe the grass,
doth he not much more clothe us ? "With what does that
mean? Gowns, coats? They stop very short who stop there,
in the reading. That which grows out of us ; whatever we
come to ; the shaping, and the placing, and the history ; that
is the raiment he puts upon us, to see us by, and to make us
see each other. And yet the life is more the body is
more than the raiment. There is more within and beyond
than has ever come forth. More, and better worth. Close to
us, close to what there is of any one of us already, is this
thought of God, which is his presence, his touch ; yet far
back, touching also all in the whole world that has had to do
with this life, this consciousness with its being here to-day,
and with what from afar off and away back has worked toward
it, and tended to make it just where and as it is, reaches his
438 HITHERTO :
consciousness for it, which outruns its own ; and away on, to
what may be, through all possible conditions, forever. To say
that God is with me, that he knows all of me, is to make him
infinite just for me. And so he is. So he is for every one.
Each soul is held in the very heart of his almightiness, as if
there were a separate almightiness for each. If there had
only been one soul, there must have been a God to take care
of it."
I felt tears go down my cheeks. I could not say a word.
It was rich and beautiful ; warm with the conception of God's
love and nearness. I glowed while I heard it ; but did I
feel God so?
I had come to this close analysis ; I had come to know that
I might stand and look at the glory ; that I might catch, with
joy, a reflected ray ; that my heart might burn in me, to walk
ever so little way beside a life that held itself so beside the
Highest ; yet that straight down into my own consciousness
the life and the glory might never have come.
I could think of the great, warm earth, turning in the sun-
flood ; I could think of little hidden herbs and grasses, and
glorious wilderness flowers, each touched with that living
thought that was a meaning and a creation ; I could think of
little birds in the forest depths, with a Presence about them
more brooding than the mother-wing. I could conceive,
gladly, that wherever a life was, there was the instant Giver.
I could so put God into the world, or the world into him,
as if I were a thought outside the world and him. I could
think of souls of men held deep in his infinity ; I could think
of myself there and yet not be there. In the very present
life beating in me, could I feelhis heart-beat? Could I sa} r ,
" Now thou quickenest me ; now thou art with me, and I with
thee ; the glory of thy Face is upon me " ?
"lean hear all his word," I said to Grandon Cope. " I
know it when I hear it ; but I think it is spoken above me,
among the angels. It does not call me by my name ; I believe
that my life is in him, as you say ; but it is as one in a reverie,
thinking of the place he stands in, forgetting that he is bod-
ily there. The very thinking puts me outside. If I could
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS.
wake out of the dream, if I could leave off thinking and
just say, Here am I ! and find him round me. How can I find
him ? How can I come close, and know ? "
" At the feet of his Christ."
The man of thought, of power, of insight, said this. The
man of science had but this simple answer for me.
" Christ, also, is in the unseen heaven."
" He walked the earth. His life is in it. The Past is Now.
He answers you and me in every word he spoke to those Hebrew
men and women. We have the commandment and the gift.
He is the same yesterday, to-da}*, and forever ; and he opens
the kingdom of heaven to all believers. But we must begin at
the beginning ; we must come in at the door ; we must not climb
up some other waj r . And the beginning is Do the will.
Then my Father will come, and I will come. Do not trouble
about finding. You shall be found."
I asked him no more questions.
He sat a little while, silently, and then got up to go. I
rose to say good-by.
It was to be good-by. He would hardly come again. He
was to go to New York next week.
He took from his pocket a little parcel, tied in white paper
with a silken string.
" This is for you," he said. " It was Augusta's ; and I
desire for you, as I did for her, that the sign of it may be
fulfilled in 3^011. I leave it for you to read, for I know you
have the alphabet. And now, good-by."
He did not ask me if I would accept the gift. He did not
put it as a gift from himself. It was something that had been
Augusta's. He just laid it down upon the table, and turned
and took my hand. He held it firmly, warmly, with the long
grasp of a friend ; then suddenty he let it go.
Between us were a few steps, the length of the room, then
he was gone out of the house.
The distance had begun ; the distance that was to be meas-
ured between us over land and sea. The minutes had begun
that were to be counted between these last words and any we
might ever speak again. The minutes that were to roll them-
44:0 HITHERTO :
selves into hours and days and weeks and months and 3 r ears ;
and fill themselves with life, working, separating, chang-
ing, between us two.
My friend ! My friend !
He walked down the drive-way. I saw him standing by
the garden-fence with Richard. I saw the two men take each
other by the hand, and hold each other so, by the length of
their straightening arms, as they moved and parted. I saw
each lift his hat as he turned away.
There was thorough, warm respect between those two.
A strange thrill of pride in them both my husband and
my friend came up in me as I looked. 'jfrien I took the
little white parcel from the table and went away, hastily,
into my room with it.
I shut myself in, and sat down, and untied the string.
I held upon my lap a narrow, oblong, blue velvet case. I
touched the spring and let the lid fall back. Inside, upon
pure white satin, lay the exquisite bracelet, the most beauti-
ful one I had seen Augusta wear, of flexile, delicately-
linked Etruscan gold ; its chains fastened with " a knop and
a flower, a knop and a flower," in tiniest, most shadowy-fine
fretwork ; its clasp a single turquoise of great size, of fairest,
unflawed, tender blue. The gern was as large as half my thumb ;
convex-oval ; shaped like a shell lying back uppermost, with
a ridge along its middle. It was like a little, beautiful,
heaped-up wave. Only its color was* like the sky.
I knew about it. Augusta was proud of its great value.
Grandon had bought it of an Alexandrian Jew, at the great
fair at Leipsic. There was hardly another like it in the world.
" I knew the alphabet. He desired its sign to be fulfilled
in me."
The perfect gold ; deep, rich-colored, unalloyed.
Ah, but this gold was fretted ; tortured with workmanship.
Its delicate links, its knops and its flowers, subtilely
twisted, how had they been drawn, and bent, and wrested,
and pained !
Was that why the gold of the altar must be made holy with
"beaten and cunnin work "? The metal that could uix'l
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 441
endure, was that the type of soul-substance God loved to
deal with, out of which he shapes his cherubim?
Only the purest could be made thus beautiful. That is the
value and the proof.
Held, and clasped, and finished with the stainless blue.
I did not so much as touch it with one of my fingers. I
shut down the lid, and laid it away from me.
Augusta had worn it complacently. Could not people read
the meanings of these things they bind upon themselves and
placidly appropriate? The fine-twined linen, and the blue, and
the purple, and the beaten gold? How do we dare?
I do not know how my thoughts ran on then, or whether
they stood still.
All at once, it was a good while first, something said
in me, or I said in myself (in these silences how do we
know who speaks?) :
" He will go out there. He will go out and marry Hope ! "
I felt the words. I heard them, plainly in myself. I could
not turn away from that, nor from the pain-shot that went
through me as they came. I knew that I was out beyond the
breakers. I knew the undertow had all but got me, then.
I started up upon my feet. I stood still, as it were, with alt
my might.
" What if he does!" I cried out, aloud, defying myself.
I lifted my foot, and struck it down upon the floor, as if I
trampled something underneath. .
" I will not be this thing ! "
" Shall I forfeit my soul for a shred, a shadow of a mere
garment that my life might have put on, but that it never
did, and never may? Shall I grieve and spoil a better soul
than mine? Where shall I get help to take this out of me
before it grows ? "
" At the feet of his Christ."
I heard that too.
I went down, then, upon my knees. In the middle of the
floor, where I had been standing.
I felt as if I were in the wide pavement of the temple. I
felt as if He sat before me. I felt as if one, but a little worse
442 HITHERTO:
than I, had gone away, leaving the place empty for me to
come. It seemed as if the pity had not yet gone out of His
eyes.
Christ, I come to thee for cleansing'! Save this life of
me, that is more than raiment ! "
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 443
CHAPTER XLI.
SAVED ; YET
THEY were out on Red Hill.
It was a Sunday afternoon in September.
The air was at once crisp and sweet. Summer sent her
slant light along the earth, most beautiful as she slid away,
down to the waiting zones below ; as the waning afternoon
gives back a level glory more intimate than the noontide
splendor.
They had been to church in the morning. After dinner,
Richard had slept. Anstiss found him, as she sometimes did
in these days, lying on the cool, broad sofa in the open hall.
" Resting a minute," he would say when she asked him. But
Richard Hathaway had not been used to rest.
She went and made some cool lemonade to give him when
he should awake.
" It did him good. It brightened him ; that, and his nap,"
she said to herself, as she took away the glass when he had
drunk it.
It was her thought of him that brightened him. She had
thought so much of him, in every little way, lately. She had
always been kind and dutiful ; but these last weeks it had
been more as he was used to think for her.
"It is almost as if her very, whole heart was in it," he said
to himself. "It is almost as if I were enough for her."
Anstiss Hathaway had her husband to win over again. Not
his love ; that never changed. But she had to persuade him
silently ; by living, not by words that her love, wholly
and truly, might yet be his ; that these years of their mar-
ried life had been but a part of their history, the history of
444: HITHERTO :
their heart-growing toward each other ; that their beautiful,
perfect moment was yet to come.
There are many marriages that are like this ; many in which
the story ends darkly, just because they do not see that it is
only telling, not all told.
" Shall we go to walk, Nansie? "
"Do you feel like it?"
She was afraid he would do it just for her.
" Yes. Just like it. I should like to go over to Red
Hill."
" That is a ride."
" And a walk after the ride. Wouldn't you like it ? It is
pleasant weather for Red Hill."
" If you think you are quite able."
" Of course I am able. "What a funny ' if that is, Nan-
sie ! "
Some people are "of course" always able, as others are
equally, of course, always unable. It seems to be so set down
for them and accepted ; and it takes a long time for themselves
or for others to change the attitude or the impression, of
ability, especially. It would take a long time for Richard
Hathaway to come to considering his steps.
So they were out on Red Hill.
Anstiss had a basket full of mosses and lichens, gathered
as they came up. She had been straying about here, upon the
broad hill-top, picking up more.
She came and sat down by Richard.
It was on the self-same flat shelf of gray stone, with the
rest below for their feet, looking toward the great, open west
filling with glory, where they had sat ten years before ; when
she had told him " never to rnind ; they would just have a
good time."
Was that what she had come to, with the hard, restless life-
question? With her little basket of mosses, red, gray, pearly
and green, and that pleased face ? Was she just making the
best of it, at last?
" She looks almost like a happy woman. She is trying to
be. Poor Nansie ! It is like when she was a little girl, with
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. . 445
her little, pale, ^hin face, and her short, stiff hair, that Miss
Chisrn would keep cut, tying on wreaths of shavings down
in the shop, and -wearing them for curls. She is trying to
make it do. Brave little Nansie ! What a woman she would
have been if it had done !
" She has tried before. I've seen it. And it's been no use.
It'll be no use again, perhaps. I don't count it for n^self, any
of it, only the goodness. I thank her for that in nry very
heart. I shall tell her so, when I. get where I can tell things.
If I went first, perhaps I could say it to her, in still times,
when she is happy, and out of her happiness sends back some
pitiful, tender thought to me. Perhaps I could do for her
then. Perhaps I could make things come, some of them,
as they ought to come for her. Maybe that's what I'm put
alongside of her now for ; to love her, and to find out.
" I think I shall go first. I think I ought to. I think that's
the way it's meant, most likely. It's all planned out, better
than I could plan it. And then it'll be forgiven me, maybe,
that I tied her to me so, here, for a while."
Anstiss was laying out the mosses on her lap ; putting the
deep, rich-colored ones, with cups and spires, alongside the
delicate, misty, pale-green pieces, and against these again, the
full, velvety, emerald mosses proper that she had found in the
low woods. Among them, and overlapping them also, she
heaped, as she came to them, the silvery flaked lichens, such
as the humming-bird thatches her nest with, and all the varied
browns that one hardly believes are, until one searches for
them, and finds how curiously and untiringly the beauty and
the manifoldness are put even into these simplest growths,
these mere gatherings of time and of decay.
It was a pleased face, still with content, that she bent over
these. Not such a face as had searched the far clouds for
their colors and their meanings, that night ten years ago ; yet
it looked afar also, into depths of tender minuteness, as it
held itself above these things from underfoot that were tinted
with the same touches that wrote the word in lines of fire
across the heavens.
Near things.
446 . HITHERTO :
That was what she was thinking, saying to herself. Little,
and near, and eveiy-day things. The meaning is in these also.
And the gift and the joy as well.
Near doing, and near living, and near loving, these life-
particles make the great heaven, as the little, polarized atoms
of light, all magnetized one way, make the great blue in which
the stars burn forever. Each point is intense and perfect azure,
even if it were alone. Each soul, purely poised, is a heaven ;
and they all are " the bocty of heaven in his clearness," where-
in the Throne of God is like unto a sapphire, " above the
firmament that is over their heads."
She was willing, at last, to be a soul-particle ; to be glad
with all souls in the joy of the Lord.
She drew closer to Richard's side. She took up little bash-
ful, loving ways with him, as if, true-pointing now herself,
she felt, like the needle of a crystal, the true-pointing that
was in him, and that set them closer, side by side.
These ways of hers were like a beautiful torment to him.
" If it could only really be ! " he thought. " If she did not
have to try ! "
He looked down at her, putting his arm about her, letting
her rest so.
There came a bright little gleam of a smile, climbing sud-
denly up into her face. It seemed happy, and it seemed
amused.
"What is it, Nansie?" he asked, as he looked down and
met it.
"Zaccheus, he
Did climb a tree,"
she answered, out of the Primer.
"And, you see, he need not have done it. That is what
it means, I think, instead of altogether to praise his zeal.
He thought he must climb high, to see the Lord. But the
first thing Jesus says to him, when he sees him there, is to
call him down. ' I will abide in thine house,' he tells him.
I've just noticed it, as Hope says."
" You are growing like Hope, somehow," said Richard.
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 447
"Am I, Richard? Then I am growing fitter to be your
wife." .
Fitter to be his wife ! Why, that was the other way !
Could she be thinking like that? She looked so glad, too,
when he said it. He could see. as it were, a quick pulse of
joy in her eyes. The blue of them grew deep, as if color
surged up into them.
" Do you know, Richard, I have thought a good many times,
that Hope ought to have been your wife ? And I think, not
that she let herself tlnnk of it, or be sorry ; that is not Hope's
way, but I think she might have been, naturally, if you had
asked her instead of me."
" I did ask her, Xansie."
He told his wife this, after those nine years. He said it
almost before he thought.
" Richard ! "
" She was too true to me to take me. I asked her when I
had no hope of you. And yet
" I should have gone on loving you all my life."
That was what was behind the yet ; but she did not know
it. He stopped there. Why, this was strangely like love-
making again, and they, old married people ! How came
their talk to run of this fashion ? He stopped himself at that
"yet" like a lover who did not know how it should be taken.
She wondered, troublously, what had been behind it. She
was as shy to ask as she would have been nine years ago.
She was slowly loving, and slowly winning, him again, as if
she had been a girl. Slowly finding out, that is, that she
could " love much ; " hoping also to be forgiven much ; slowly
beguiling him to believe.
Is it a strange story ?
How pretty Anstiss was to-day ! Prettier at twentjMiine
than ever. Something like the changefulness of girlhood,
trembling and flushing with half-formed thoughts, showed it-
self in her glance, her color.
Some sort of peace, some touch of wonderful rest, also, had
come over the unrestful, feverish nature, these last two
months. Richard did not know. Only she herself, and He to
448 HITHERTO :
whom she came, in her struggle, her pain, her sin, knew
how it had been. He had put forth his hand and lifted her
up, and the fever had left her, and she rose to do sweet min-
istering ; to earn her life again.
If only Richard would keep well ! If she could only have
time !
Was it but two months ? She seemed to have lived so long
since that day when Grandon Cope came there and bade her
good-by, and left her with the storm in her heart. So much
had slid back, and seemed long past already ; because she had
so utterly let it go. So much had hushed itself within her,
and so much was wakening, as into a sweet, new morning.
" I will take this life that Thou hast given me, and I will
live it out with my hand in Thine. I will thank Thee for it
every day. I will trust Thee for what it shall come to, with
both of us, souls just begun, as we are. I will love that in
him that Thou art making ; I will trust Thee, gladlv, for what
Thou art making in me. Speak Thy word unto me daily, and
keep me clean ! "
It was with a prayer like this God saved her.
But sometimes a terrible dread came over her, a fore-
shadowing thrill. Might she be saved, " so as by fire"?
Might Richard go hence, into the glory ; be clothed, sud-
denly, with his great, waiting angelhood, and leave all this
little life of his, with its love and its pain, behind him?
Leave her, in her unworthiness, her sin unatoued? Would
God deal thus with her ?
She could not bear that. She could nob look at that
thought long.
" Forgive, as we forgive each other," she cried ; and the
plea was a promise. " Undo and abate all that can be un-
done and abated, as we would when we truly forgive/'
And so she hoped again.
In the silence between these two the depth of their life was
flowing.
They got up to go down the hill again.
All down in the meadows was the golden, rolling mist of
the sunset. The tops of the trees moved in it, and the clouds
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 449
waited, above, tilll the level glory should slide down over the
horizon, and its shafts slant upward to make them splendid
after the earth was dark.
They did not talk much on the way. Anstiss was learning
to feel her husband's soul in the stillness. She was not rest-
less for words, as she had been. But Richard, he thought
she was learning to do without.
They had got almost to the foot of the hill, to where the
horse waited, when Richard suddenly stopped, leaning up
against a tree. His face turned pale, so that it shone out in
the gathering dusk.
Anstiss sprang to his side.
He could not speak, at first ; he only smiled, as she looked
up at him in a terror.
" It is only a dizziness," he said then, the color coming
back partly, and he moving to go on. " I have it sometimes.
And my head has ached to-day. It was better up there on
the hill."
" Richard ! Richard ! don't let it ache ! Don't be dizzy,
don't be sick ! You were always well, till I worried you ! "
And Anstiss put her arms up over his shoulders, and burst
out crying.
" Why, little Nansie ! Do you care like that? "
He grew strong, then, all of a sudden, as he had grown faint.
He put her into the chaise, and got in beside her.
" We'll go home and get some tea. We shall both be all
right, then."
' But Richard was not all right in the morning. For the first
time in his life he could not get up and dress. His head was
heavy with pain, and his eyes were feverish and bloodshotten.
His limbs all ached. There was a strange dreaminess in his
brain. Things did not seem real to him.
Did they seem real to his wife ?
Real as the day of judgment.
" It's nothin' more than I expected," said Martha Gecldis.
" It's ben a drasgin' on him all summer lonsr. Now he's sot
CO O C?
to wrastle it out. And it's which'll beat, fever or man. You
an' I has got our hands full, Mis' Hathaway."
20
450 HITHERTO :
CHAPTER XLH.
SO AS BY FIRE.
" BE not deceived. God is not mocked. Whatsoever a
man soweth, that shall he also reap."
God might forgive, but I must suffer it out.
Those awful, inexorable words stood by me like angels of
doom.
Sometimes he knew me ; sometimes he smiled. Sometimes
his gaze was all wide and wild. Fever had him. He was not
my Richard any more. He was a soul in the deep, lone
struggle with death. I could only stand by.
I could not say my heart to him ; not any of it, ever again.
I could only give drink to his lips, and smooth the pillows
for his dear head, and sit like a still, cursed thing, through the
midnights, bearing my sentence.
" He found no place for repentance, though he sought it
carefully, with tears." Was that true? Did God punish
so?
Where was the Christ who had forgiven me? I could not
find him, then, in the darkness. I was all alone ; and there
was my husband, going out of the world ; passed, already,
beyond my touch.
We kept him in a perfect hush.
If he were dead, I could have cried to him. I could have
prayed God to give him my messages. But I could sa}^ no
word to him now, lest he should die ; lest that should deter-
mine what I believed was determined already.
If he were gone, he would come back to me, perhaps ; to his
poor little, suffering, contrite wife. I did not think he could
stay away, even in heaven. But he was so far away, now !
Tossing on that great deep of pain ; withdrawn from this life ;
A S'SOItY OF YESTERDAYS. 451
not taken into the life eternal. 1 almost longed for the clays
and nights to be over ; for what should come, to come.
I could not say one word to God. Was that because my
whole soul was one awful agon}' of prayer? It just lay bare
and wretched before him. What would he do with it? Would
he ever send one word of peace into it again? Was I already
in the outer darkness ?
His sister came, and his brother. They wanted to help me.
Everybody wanted to help me. They tried to make me go to
bed, and sleep. They said I was doing too much ; that I
should not hold out. I knew I should have to hold out ;
that souls did hold out, to bear all their punishment.
I heard John Hathaway tell the doctor, " His wife is giving
up her life for him."
They thought I was a good, self-sacrificing wife. Why, I
knew that I had killed him !
I almost laughed when I heard such things. If I had laughed,
I should have gone mad. I knew how near I came to it.
But God kept my senses, too ; all my power to see and suf-
fer it through.
Then, after days and nights, it began to grow dead and old.
I knew I had got something awful laid awaj', to look at and
to bear, by and by. But I had borne all I could, just now.
I went on with a kind of mechanical persistence. I made
gruels, and beef-tea ; I measured cordials ; I dropped medi-
cines ; I sat and watched at night, except when they put me
down on the sofa in his room, and made me lie there for an
hour.
I kept it all in my heart, all I had to say to him, and that
he would go away and never hear ; I should have it to keep
for years and years and j-ears, perhaps, till God would let me
die and come and say it there. I thought he would let me say
it there, just once ; let me speak to him one moment, even if
he sent me right away again, forever. I thought impiously
and fiercely, that I would say it. And then I remembered
how easily I was being hindered here. Yes ; I was in the
mighty Hand of the Living God. I could writhe and cry ; but
I could only have what he would give me.
452 HITHERTO:
There came a night, at last, when he lay, oh, so still !
No feverish tossing, no wild talk, only dead prostration.
The fever had gone ; but the life was gone with it ; wasted and
burnt awaj r . I saw the moment when the doctor gave him up.
I saw it, exulting. Now he was mine again for the little that
was left.
And his eyes knew me. I saw that.
I would have him all to m}'self this last night. I would say
it to him when he should be d3 r ing. He should go straight to
God with my repentance and fny prayer.
I told them that I would have it so. I would watch alone with
Richard to-night.
They argued against it ; they began to. I hushed them
with one word.
" I shall die if } r ou do not let me."
I said it very quietly, faintly. For the life was almost
going out of me. I had no strength for dispute ; only for do-
ing this one thing,
" I believe she says the truth," said the doctor ; and then
they gave up.
I spoke with the doctor before he went away :
"Tell me one thing. Will .anything make any difference?
Can I say something to him, if he can hear? "
" Anything you please, Mrs. Hathaway. I do not think it
can hurt him now."
No. I had hurt him all I could. Nothing could hurt him
now.
Nobody said it to me ; it came ; brought to my remembrance.
The Spirit of God said it. One after another, things joined
themselves together and came into my mind.
I had wanted a prophet ; a soul to love me that could see
great things ; a soul that stood nearer to the Great Wisdom
than L
"Verily, I say unto you, Among them that are born of
women there hath not arisen a greater prophet than John the
Baptist ; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is
greater than he."
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 453
"The kingdom of God is not meat and drink ; but right-
eousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost."
" He who shall keep the least of these my commandments,
and teach men so."
" Let them see your good works, and glorify your Father."
" And these are the works of the flesh : adultery ; un-
cleanness ; idolatry ; witchcraft."
False love ; false worship ; false spirituality. *
" But the works of the Spirit are these : love, joy, peace,
long-suffering, gentleness, meekness."
Where had the Spirit been, between us two?
I set my life and soul alongside his, my patient, great-
hearted husband's. God let down his light upon them. Which
shone forth as the sun? Which stood nearest?
I had repented before of that which the devil brought me
near to being ; I repented now, seeing in awful clearness that
which I had not been.
I watched, in silence ; all this went through my soul while
I kept count of the time, while I was instant to the second
with each restorative, the teaspoonfuls that kept life in him.
Between times, I slid to my knees before the great white easy-
chair beside his bed, and let God look at me ; to see if there
were anything amidst this evil in me that he could pity and
save. .
I would not break his quietness ; his possible rest ; not even
for that only thing that could save me from despair, his
word of forgiveness. But I prayed that he might speak to me,
some time in the long hours of this night ; that I might be able
to say that to him which I thought I should die a soul-death
if I did not say.
The first hours after midnight had been his most unquiet
ones, hitherto ; he had talked and wandered most, then. I
watched for these to see how it would be to-night.
The old clock below in the hall gave its three-minute
warning. I heard it through the heavy stillness. I waited,
as if for an axe to fall.
The single stroke came, more solemn than the stroke of
midnight. The hours had begun again.
454 HITHERTO :
Richard turned his head. His face was toward me, now.
Only the thin drapery of the bed between us, as I sat there in
the great chair. I bent down close. I could hear him
breathe.
I knew he was awake. Oh, if he had waked calmly ! If he
could hear ! If he could only be with me, one moment, before
he went away !
I heard*him say my name ; low, feebly, in a whisper ; like
a thought of me ; not a call.
" Nansie. Nansie."
And then I heard him whispering to God.
" Father Almighty, make up to her what I have made her
lose ! And make me, in thy heaven, more fit to love her, and
be with her, when she comes ! "
Then I cried up to Him, aloud.
I fell down there beside Richard, my husband, whom the
heaven must not shut in from me. I stretched my arms out
over him to keep him. I felt after the Power that raiseth whom
it will. I clutched for the hem of the garment. I believed,
mightily, in the Christ who came to just such awful needs.
" O God ! If ever a life was raised up in the name of Jesus,
give me back my husband now. For I do love him so, and I
do so repent ! Leave me not to live without him, yet ! "
His hand Richard's came over gently, till it found my
head.
" Nansie, dear little Nansie ! "
We had prayed ourselves heart to heart. Before God, in
that terrible hour, we had found each other.
I think he had thought that he must die for me.
But his love was so great, so strong, that it had power
even to live for me. He turned in that moment, and came
back from death. The life in him heard that cry of mine,
like Lazarus in the tomb ; and, bound as it were with the
very grave-clothes, it came forth.
I held him as if my life and will could kindle his. I knelt
there, with nay arms over him ; his hand upon my head, until
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 455
the clock struck two. Every little while, came that loving
whisper, like the reaches of a returning tide.
" My clear little Nansie ! "
He called me his again.
Then that double stroke warned me. I softly loosed my-
self from him and arose. I went and brought the cup from
which I fed him. More than the hour had gone by, since I
had done it last. But I could not have moved before. Not
while his hand lay so restfully upon my head, and his lips
kept breathing " Little Nansie ! " If there were good in any
giving, he was receiving from me then.
I gave him the one spoonful, now.
" More," he said, softly.
Joy sobbed up in my throat, as I gave him two and three.
His will was with my praj^er. He was resolving to get well.
God's will be with us both !
When the daylight came in, he was asleep, his hands held
fast in mine.
Some one crept softly to the door, and looked in upon us.
It was Mary.
I shook my head gently, without turning, and she went
away.
He slept until the sunshine was broad upon the entry floor,
shining in at the little crack of the just open door.
I kissed him when he woke, and gave him warm beef-tea
that Mary brought me.
Fifteen minutes after, I met the doctor at the stairhead.
" He is alive. He has spoken. He has eaten. He has
slept."
And then I fell upon the good old man's neck, and sobbed
and shook with all that night's resisted passion.
Richard got well. Because he could not go and leave me so.
It was truly the love that is stronger than death. The love
that can come back. The very power by which the Lord took
up his life again, and returned unto his own.
But one day when he could talk more, Richard said this to
me ; half as if he ought not to have been persuaded :
456 HITHERTO :
" I cannot ever I never have given you the best,
Nansie. Some one else might have. I took you covetously,
I am afraid. You belong higher. I know that. I knew it when
I came so near, when I saw clearer what the best was."
" I saw clearer too, Richard. I saw the best ; and I saw
it in 3 7 ou. But the real, whole best is in God. We both be-
long higher. It is by the life we touch in him, that we find
each other. That is the counterpart and the complement.
There is one Great, Perfect Marriage ; and the bride is the
New Jerusalem. We are only little pieces, Richard. But
we are little pieces that belong side by side."
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 457
CHAPTER XLIII.
INDIAN SUMMER.
THE Indian Summer came in November ; the ripe, warm
days when all the air was like rich, fragrant wine ; when the
smoke of the great earth's thankful incense went up in the
sunlight ; when after the hymn and the prayer of the joy and
toil come down the perfect benediction and the peace.
I went out every day with Richard. I drove him long
drives, out over the beautiful country, among the sunny hills.
I walked with him up the open orchard, and along the slopes
of the sweet, resting fields.
One day, a day I had watched and waited for, we
went up the river ; floating in the soft haze between sky and
stream, in sun and shadow, up into the dream-land, that was
more a beautiful dream than ever.
Richard was strong enough to row down. We took a boy to
row us up, and then be sent back across the fields. I wanted
to be alone with my husband again in the beaut}'' he had
brought me to that first day so long ago. I had a word that
I must say to him there.
The river, was set with gems. The deep, dark water was
like agate, laid between heaped and clustered stones. Amber
and topaz and carbuncle and ruby ; fiery gold gleaming here
and there ; the dropped leaves lay upon the banks, and floated,
piled upon each other, in the still curves. It had been a
sweet, lingering autumn. The fierce winds had not come yet ;
nor the long, sad rains.
Up over the low-spread splendor, opened the wide, soft
sky. Through the thinning branches of the trees came down
the last, most tender kisses of the sun. But the deep banks
held us in the old, beautiful seclusion. The warmth came
458 HITHERTO :
down for us, and the still gorge gathered it in, and held it,
a river above a river, a tide of glory filling it up to the brim.
"We seemed to breathe the sunlight. The life we drew into us
was golden. It was the mystic elixir men had tried to make,
resolving it back from itmost concrete form.
Richard drank great breaths of it. He took off his hat, and
let the sunshine lie among his hair. He looked grand and
beautiful to me with his bared head, blessing coming down
upon it. He bared his soul, in like wise, quietly ; and I
knew now how God's light found it. The joy was there ; we
were both in it ; it was enough.
When we sent the boy away, and lay there under the shelv-
ing rock, where some late-surviving creeper flung its embrace
of flame over the cedar branches and along the moss-warm
stone, it seemed almost as if I waked there out of a long,
dim dream that had lain between that first day of our mar-
riage and this that we were keeping now. As if a great
Mercy had rolled back the 3'ears, having shown me what they
might have been, and set me again at their fair beginning.
How do we know how much of these lives we live is just a
showing, like that? It feels so to us, often.
I had a word to say to Richard.
" We must be married," I had said to him that day. I said
that to the man I had stood up with twenty-four hours before,
solemnly taking him for my wedded husband ; with whom I
had gone to his home to live with him. And he had said to
me, simply and nobly, what I must now say to him. There
had been all these years between the two sentences of our
marriage service.
" Some great thing is in your face, Anstiss," said Richard.
I know there was. I felt it crowding to my cheeks and
eyes.
" Will you believe it, if I say it? "
" I believe yon, always."
" What do yon believe me? What am I to you, Richard?
Tell me truly."
"My dear and faithful wife."
"Is that all? But ' faithful' is a great word, too. Does
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 459
it hold all it ought to, when you say it so? What is faithful,
Richard?"
"It is good, and kind; and, yes, I do believe, con-
tent."
He put his hand upon my cheek, lovingly, as he might
upon a child's ; stroking it down, and looking into my eyes.
Content ! That was all I had made him believe yet !
"Do you know what you said to me here, nine years
ago?"
"Troublesome things, didn't I?" he asked me, smiling.
He would not come back. He would not think that mo-
ment could be for him again, with more in it ; with no de-
frauding.
"You said," I turned my face to him with eyes bent
down and glowing cheeks, glowing with the word of the
strong man's love that I remembered, " that you were
' married to me, through and through, every thought and fibre
of you.' Then we were half married. Richard, I want to
say my half to-day. There was not enough of me, then, to
say, or to know it. I think there is beginning to be more,
now. And I can say it. All there is of me does, just so, be-
long to you. There is not a thought, or a wish, that could go
aitywiiere else. Do you believe me, now? "
How could he help believing me ? When I had been nine
years in making sure ?
Before I had finished, he had his arms about me. And
when he held me back again, and looked in my face, there
Avcre great, honest, happy tears standing in his eyes.
I did not think I had half said it, after all. Half answered
this large, perfect patience ; this generous love that had been
always there, waiting, like the Lord's.
I had not. I should always be nine years behind him. I
had it all to live, to prove ; the chords, between which lie
the harmonies, are struck in marriage hours ;' the full, beauti-
ful theme is played out in the years.
Who thinks the story is all told at twenty ? Let them live
on, and trv.
460 HITHERTO:
I was half through my thirtieth year, and Kichard was
eight years more, and we had just come to this.
The Indian Summer had just touched our lives.
For God gives grace. There is no good thing not even
the right and lawful love that he will withhold, if we do
ask him with a true and sole desire ; not having a secret
mind to any other. He may give it through fire and tears as
he gave me ; yes, even the fire and the flood ma}' not be
stayed. But we must dare ask, even for that. Dare to sa} r ,
" Through whatsoever way Thou wilt ; only up ; up into per-
fect purity and truth ! "
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS, 461
CHAPTER XLIV.
FROM OVER THE SEA.
IT was one day that winter, that Richard came home from
New Oxford, bringing me news.
Richard brought news, as he did other things ; in little
parcels, put away in different pockets ; to be brought out one
bit at a time.
The first news was sorrowful ; yet only what we had for
some time expected. Mrs. Cope had died at Florence.
" Now, Mr. Cope will come home."
" Yes, he is coming."
" Hope will be back again ! "
" Has Hope written you anything about herself lately? Or
her plans ? "
" Hope? Plans? Why, no. What plans should she have?
She never did have plans. She just kept on doing, and let
things happen."
u Something has happened to Hope, Nansie."
" Happened ! O Richard ! Not any harm? "
" No. I don't think so. A change. It seems sudden,
though, hearing of it all at once."
I could not think what he meant. Would she leave Mr.
Cope ? Would she not come home ? Had she joined some
other people who had come to know her, and wanted her, per-
haps? To be sure, how could she very well stay with Mr.
Cope, all alone? And yet, how could she leave hiin alone?
" Why, dear little-woman, you are all abroad ! " said Rich-
ard, as I confusedly asked myself and him these questions.
" I shall have to break it to you as people do break things
in one great smash. They say that Hope is married."
" Married ! O Richard ! So soon ! "
462 HITHERTO:
" Soon, you blessed child ! What do you call soon ? Hope
is eight and twenty, isn't she ? How long would you have
'her or somebody else that she is saved up for wait?"
" Oh, not that! But Augusta. It is only a few months.
I could not think "
I could not think of any thing but one. And truly, in the
midst of rny bewildered surprise, I inwardly thanked God for
that, I thought of it just as I said.
"Think what?" said Richard. "What did you think, or
not think? Did you suppose it was Mr. Grandon Cope? "
" I thought he and Hope would marry some time."
Richard laughed. A great, glad laugh ; it was not only as
if he were amused at me ; it was as if something lifted itself
wholly and forever off his heart, at that moment, when I spoke
those simple words.
" Well, they won't," he said. " At least, not very proba-
bly. See here."
He showed me a New York newspaper, that he had got in
town. He folded it over, and pointed to the list of arrivals
by the steamship Cambria, from Liverpool.
There were ever so many names that were strange to me, of
course. My eye ran down these, hastily, searching for short
syllables that I knew.
" H. G. Cope, and servant."
That was all. Then came strange names again.
" Alexander Upfold. Mrs. Upfold and maid."
I let the paper drop, under my hands, upon my lap. It told
me nothing.
" There's a letter," said Richard, in his dear, provoking way,
touching me with it under the chin, as I bent down, half crying
with puzzle and impatience, over the crushed-up sheet. "Per-
haps that will tell. M} r news is only hearsay."
It was addressed in Hope's own, clear, beautiful hand.
I turned right over to the end of it, as some silly, people
turn to the end of a book.
" Hope Upfold."
The letter had been begun in Florence, more than six Aveeks
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 463
ago. It told me the first news, as soon as she had known it
herself.
" It just came to me," she wrote, in her old, quaint fashion.
" I had it before I knew. But there was a beautiful feeling in
the world, somehow, before that, though I did not stop to see
what it was. I have been very busy, you know, with Mrs.
Cope. She was very ill at Lago Maggiore, and we were late
in coming away. He found us there again ; he had been with
us in Rome, and he has always been so kind. Everything was
always pleasanter when he came. He brought things to us
that we could not go after. It seemed to me all Rome came
in little bits, of talk, and things to see and talk and learn
about, into that pleasant, high, balconied room, out of which
Mrs. Cope could so seldom go, and where I could not often
leave her alone. When there was only Mr. Cope, he could
not do so much for me, because we could not both be away.
But when Mr. Upfold came, he seemed to make everything
easy. He would have a book, or a picture, or fresh news, or
fruit and flowers to bring in to her, and make her cheerful with,
and to brighten up Mr. Cope. So then she would spare me.
And he took me about. He said he wanted to see what I
should ' notice ' in Rome. He picked up that little word of
mine, and made so much of it ! I hardly ever dare to say it
now.
" Do you know, he never forgot the little talk we had that
night at Mrs. Holgate's, all those years ago? He $a.ys I
planted something in him then, and took possession, as people
do with land, to claim it ; and that the something has been
growing ever since. I can't tell how that may be, but a great
deal lias been planted some time !
" You would like Mr. Upfold, Anstiss.
" How strange it is, if I did take possession then, that we
have both come half round the world to find each other, and
to find out about it, now !
" I don't think he could have really known, any more than I
did. It makes me think of the man that ' planted seed in a
field, and slept and rose, night and day, and the seed came up
464 HITHERTO :
and grew, he knew not how.' We do not ever kno\t what is
growing for us, do we?
" I do not know what we should have done at Lago Maggiore,
if it had not been for him. That was before Mr. Grandon
Cope came, you know. And then, when we came on to
Florence, he came with us, and all the old pleasantness began
again. And so the other day only he told me this that I
have been telling you. and all the rest of it.
" It has come to me, just given. And now I do not see
how I could have gone on with the rest of my life if it had
not come.
" I am very happy, Anstiss." .
The letter broke off here, and was not sent. Mrs. Cope was
ill again, fearfully ill ; and then Mr. Cope broke down. Gran-
don was there then ; but Alexander Upfold stood by them all,
with his love and help, all through the hard, sad time ; till
the end came ; till the last faithful ministering was given, and
the dear friend was laid at rest.
She was buried there, at Florence. It was her own wish.
She knew that if she did not ask this, they would bring her
home ; and she knew that this would be such a terrible dut3^.
"Think of me here," she said, " resting among the beauty.
Let me lie down where the peace comes upon me, and think
of me so. It will be better."
So they did as she said ; and then Hope was alone with Mr.
Cope ; except for Grandon, who had his little sons to hinder
his perfect freedom. He came with them as far as England
on their return, and there Hope and Mr. Upfold were married.
Hope sent her letter, filled up with all its sad and sweet com-
pletion, by the steamer just before the one in which they sailed.
It only got to me as she arrived in New York.
We talked about it as people do talk of things. Over and
over ; trying to take hold of it closer, by every little corner
of circumstance.
We talked of Hope's new name. We could not, somehow
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 465
bear to give up the old, beautiful one that she was sent into
the world to live.
Yet "Hope Upfold" sounded to me full and sweet and
noble, too. Lifted and cherished ; clothed also with new
lifting and cherishing power for others. Yes ; Hope Upfold
also was a beautiful name.
" It never could have been that other man, you see," said
Martha Geddis. " It stands to reason. Hope Cope ! Who
ever went and rhymed themselves up after that fashion, I
should like to know? I alwers knew it wouldn't be, for all
folks said, and they did say things when he went out to
Europe after his folks, and she there with 'em. I alwers
knew it never'd do, after I put them two names together in my
own mind, and took just one single squinny at 'em."
" Marriages are made in heaven," said Nurse Cryke. " But
folks don't half see what that means, either. The Lord takes
'em in hand ; and he works slow. He don't make a marriage,
any more than he made the heavens and the earth, right off,
slap, in one day. He takes two people, and he marries 'em all
along. Sometimes they're a good deal married, in the very
beginning ; and sometimes it's years first ; and sometimes he
don't get through with 'em as long as they both live. And
yet folks expect it all at once, and just to sit down and enjoy
it here. And they make themselves miserable if they
think there's anything better in this great grab-bag of a world
that they might have lit on, and didn't ! As if they were
bound to get the very best, or else they hadn't made ouk
They needn't worry nor pucker ; the making out is farther
on." And Nurse Cryke's elbow elevated itself with a right-
angled rush as if it were an inspired guideboard, set direct
to the exact point in the Far-off where the making out would
be.
Hope saw much, and I told her something more, of how it
had been with me ; how it was with us now, in our home.
" And yet," I said to her, talking one day of these things,
".I can't understand it for everybody, Hope. Not even ac-
cording to Nurse Cryke's doctrine. There would have been
30
466
no excuse for me. But there are lives, there are marriages,
we see them sometimes, where there is nothing to cling
to ; where it is all terrible loss and mistake and wretchedness,
all the way through. It is still the problem of the world.
When a soul is tied to some mere brutish thing, in the shape
of man or woman, what then? "
u Then," said Hope, " this living is only a little piece, after
all. Then one can bear ; for the sake of a Love that bore all
terrible contradiction of sin against itself; for the sake of
what that Love sees, and bears with by us ; for that for which
also even the meanest one is " apprehended of Christ Jesus."
For the By and B}'. I saw in Rome, once, Anstiss, an old
coin, a silver denarius, all coated and crusted with green
and purple rust. I called it rust ; but Aleck told me it was
copper ; the alloy thrown out from the silver, until there was
none left. Within, it was all pure. It takes ages to do it ;
but it does get done. Souls are like that, Anstiss. Some-
thing moves in them, slowly, till the debasement is all thrown
out. Some time, the very tarnish shall be taken off."
Hope was Hope Devine still ; she could still " see."
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 467
CHAPTER XLV.
TO-DAY.
IT was a year and a half after this, that our little girl was
born.
In the full, bright summer-tide.
I had the pain and the peace again. But the pain was a
joy.
All pain is gain, I said ;
God, he hath helped me.
There were rhythm and rhyme measuring and uttering them-
selves in my heart, and this was the refrain they came to.
And the peace was like the peace of heaven.
One beautiful night, with the little daughter at my side, in
the stillness.
Then there came a day of fear ; to show us how great our
joy was.
We almost lost her : she almost went back into heaven.
Nurse Cryke sat with her on her lap in the window. Richard
was by my bed.
" Mr. Hathaway ! Look here ! "
What a strange voice she spoke in ! I shall never forget
how it sounded.
I was up on my arm with the instant impulse.
" Mis' Hathaway ! You lay right down ! " And she thrust
out her elbow at me ; then lifting it, she beckoned Richard
nearer.
I saw her point to the baby's face. She whispered ; but I
heard what she said.
" Blue spazzum ! Get me some brandy ! "
" Nurse ! " I cried. " Tell me what it is. I can't be quiet
unless you do."
4G8 HITHERTO:
" Well, it aint much, I guess ; only it oughter to be seen to.
A kind of a ketch in her breath, or her cirkleation, or some-
thing. You keep still, or less we shall have you to look
after."
Richard came back with the brandy. He mixed a few
drops in water, as Mrs. Cryke told him, and she gave it to the
child.
" It's fetched back the color a little. I guess she'll do.
But I tell you I was scared ! I didn't know I don't know
certain yet but what "
She whispered again, and again my sharpened senses caught
it.
" She might be a blue baby. And they don't live."
" Mrs. Cryke, I hear every word. I should hear you think
now. You must tell me every single thing. Richard, come
here. Is she really better ? "
" She looks better. The doctor is coming, now. Don't be
frightened, Nansie. That would be worst of all, for all of
us."
" No. I won't be frightened. I will keep just as still !
Only, you must tell me everything. I always know things,
Richard. I shall know worse than you do, if you let me
alone."
" I've no doubt of that, you bad little woman," said Richard.
But he was pale, too. The good Richard ! Oh, I knew God
would not take back his little daughter from him, now !
The doctor looked grave. He could not tell, he said. These
were obscure things ; it was what we could not touch ; we
could only be very careful, and wait.
The brandy was right, he told Nurse Cryke. It might have
saved her life. Some stimulus, to give nature a start. Nature
had the thing to do, if it were done.
And then presently, he sat down and told Richard how it
was. I would not let them go away into another room. I
would hear it all.
It was a little valve, between two parts of the heart, that
ought to close, perfectly, at birth. Sometimes it did not, at
A STORY OF YESTERDAYS. 469
once. Sometimes it never did. And that was a "blue
baby."
Nothing we could reach.
little heart ! Just begun to play ! Play rightly ; fill
perfectly with dear life ! What should we do, Richard and I,
if the little valve would not shut? If the tiny, awful mech-
anism failed, and stopped !
" Hold her so," said the doctor. " Do not change her
position. Do not let her be turned upon her side. Watch
her ; and if the paleness comes, give her the brandy."
He put a pillow in the nurse's lap and she rested the baby
upon it.
We kept her on that pillow all the day ; all the night.
When bedtime came, Richard made Mrs. Cryke go to rest.
She put the pillow on the bed beside me. I asked to have it.
I told them I should not sleep if they took her away, where I
could not see, could not know. I would sleep, if they
would let me have her.
Richard sat beside the bed all night.
1 slept because I had promised ; because I knew I must.
But every time I waked, there was the little face, pale, but life-
like, on the pillow, and there was Richard, with his eyes
always on the little face.
" She breathes better," we said to each other.
" She sleeps quietly."
" Her lips are not so white."
" Her nails are not so blue."
"I can't help hoping," said Richard, softly. "But
Nansie ! don't you go to hoping ! "
And then I would shut my eyes to please him ; saying
nothing.
Every time, the lips had a faint trace of better color. Every
time, the little face looked somewhat pinker. Every time, I
found Richard bending over to see these things, or to lift the
corner of the little blanket, gently, on which rested the atom
of a hand.
" It isn't much, yet ; it don't amount to very much ; don't
you count upon it, Nansie ; but yet I can't help hoping."
470 HITHERTO:
It was broad daylight when I roused wholly, after a long,
sweet nap, into which I fell with Richard's words repeating
themselves, soothingly, in my brain.
" I can't help I can't help hoping ! "
He sat there just as he had sat all night.
The dear little bit of a face, warm with sleep, was almost
rosy. There was no blueness around the mouth, nor under
the little, tender nails. We looked up, together, from it.
" I don't hardly dare to say it, Nansie ; and you mustn't
believe it, till the doctor comes. But that valve's shut ! "
I suppose it was. I suppose the wonderful mystery, be-
yond our ken and handling, had perfected its own office ; that
the little beat and count were established that should be the
pulse of a human life.
For it has beat on, and we still have our child.
" It was so strange," we said, after our breath came freely,
and the da3 r s went by. " All hung upon a little, trembling
membrane, out of our reach, that might draw close, or that
might not. How little we know about the valves, any of
them ! "
" Yes," said Nurse Cryke, jerking up both elbows at once
as she finished the baby's toilette with a little pin in the laced
robe-front, and drew all smoothly down. " But the beauty
of that is, that we haven't got to do with the valves. All we've
got to do is to go ahead and breathe."
I thought how all my life I had been feeling for the valves.
" What shall we call her? " Richard asked of me.
" Why, there is only one name ! We christened her all
that night. Hope. What a little Hope it was, when you kept
telling me I shouldn't ! "
"And yet," I said again, "it won't be Hope Devine, after
all. There never was such a true name as that."
" This is true, too, and cheery. It tells the rest of it.
Hope Hath a way ! "
One thing happened, a few weeks after, that I can never
think of without a great throb of humble love, and a great
A STOIIY OF YESTERDAYS. 471
shudder also, at the weight of punishment it showed me might
have been.
Richard sat in our room, holding little Hope in his arms.
Nurse Cryke had gone, and I was busy at some drawers,
putting away and changing things, and making cosey, comfort-
able arrangements for settling down to the sole care of my
Little child.
It was curious and touching to see Richard hold that tender
little thing in his great, strong arms, and lift it against his
broad, sheltering bosom. She rested there like a little wind-
flower born against a hill-side.
He looked in the tiny face as if the fair, innocent eyes and
the dawning smile told years full of blessed stories to him
for the time to come.
Suddenly he reached her out to me.
" For the dear heaven's sake ! Anstiss, take the child ! I've
got something that I must attend to before I'm an hour older !
Don't wait tea for me. I'm going in to New Oxford, to see
John Proctor. He'll be married and off to-morrow ! "
Five minutes after, he went out of the yard, on horseback.
I could hear Swallow's feet strike into their swiftest trot as
he went down the hill.
After that he could not help answering my questions when
he came home. I don't know whether he might have done it,
if lie had not startled me so, and left me in such an as-
tonishment. '
" I wanted- to get this," he told me, taking out a folded
paper from his breast-pocket, long and legal-looking.
He had come into the little tea-room, and Martha had just
put the tray on the table for him, and gone out again into the
kitchen.
" I've torn the signature off, and now it must go into the
fii'e. I made my will, Nansie, four years ago. That is all.
When we hadn't any little Hope, you know."
Yes, I knew. I knew that the word was true with a sig-
nificance that he did not purposely put into it.
I reached my hand out, and took it from him. I would see
this will of Richard's, before he burned it. I would see what
472 , HITHERTO:
thought had been in his heart four j r ears ago ; when he hadn't
any, little hope !
He let me have it, though I think it had hardly been his
meaning.
I took it to the window, to read it by the waning light,
while he drank his tea.
I read a new page in his great, generous, silent life.
I saw where, in a fresh point, his manhood touched, as I
had demanded that manhood should, the Nature Divine ; the
Nature that can care for the unthankful and the evil ; the
loving, giving, and forgiving God.
I sat there still, in the gathering dusk. My tears fell
down, hot, upon the unfolded paper.
Richard turned round, present^, wondering. Then he got
up and came over to me.
" Why, Nansie ! " he said. " Little wifie ! "
" O Richard ! " I sobbed, with my hands in his, and my
head bowed down upon them. "If this had come to me
then, two years ago, I should have gone away, like Judas,
and hanged myself." -
All those are old times, now ; to Hope, and little Hope,
and Richard, and me. We talk them, over, some of them,
when we are together.
Little Hope is fifteen now.
Hope Upfold lives at South Side. Her husband built a
house there, near the Copes. The neighborhood is wider
now, and rich with cultured and friendly life. Hope's life has
widened, also, to its privilege and power. It is large and
beautiful.
She has three glorious boys, and a fair little daughter, An-
stiss.
Grandon Cope has never married.
He is the true, strong, outgiving friend of us all.
I said that people who would tell of to-day should wait un-
til it had become yesterday. They may do better. They
may wait till the yesterdays, in their turn, have become to-
day. For that is what they do. That is what they are
made for, and the process of them. All God's yesterdays
make up his grand To-day. When the soul wakes to the
light of his meaning for it, its morning has begun.
I thank him that I see mine high already over the hori-
zon.
For now, I am up the hill ; and the top is a green table-
land ; like the grand, beautiful reaches that lie beyond the
edges of wild, precipitous western bluffs, toward the sunset ;
a long, fertile joy.
And, beyond the sunset, are the Hills of God.