Alice C. Hegan - "Mrs. Wiggs Of The Cabbage Patch"

Various - "Stories by English Authors: The Sea"

Rutherford Platt - "First Book of Adam and Eve"

Michael Clarke - "Story of Aeneas"

What Can She Do?

E >> Edward Pason Roe >> What Can She Do?




As she sat sipping her tea before a red-hot stove, she told, in answer
to the landlady's questions, how she had got up from the boat.

"Who is this Lacey, and what is there against them?" she asked
suddenly.

The hostess went across the hall, opened the bar-room door, and
beckoned Edith to follow her.

In a chair by the stove sat a miserable bloated wreck of a man,
drivelling and mumbling in a drunken lethargy.

"That's his father," said the woman in a whisper. "When he gets as bad
as that he comes here because he knows my husband is the only one as
won't turn him out of doors."

An expression of intense disgust flitted across Edith's face, and by
the necessary law of association poor Arden sank in her estimation
through the foulness of his father's vice.

"Is there anything against the son?" asked Edith in some alarm. "I've
engaged him to bring up my furniture and trunks. I hope he's honest."

"Oh, yes, he's honest enough, and he'd be mighty mad if anybody
questioned that, but he's kind o' soured and ugly, and don't notice
nobody nor nothing. The son and Mrs. Lacey keep to themselves, the man
does as you see, but the daughter, who's a smart, pretty girl, tries
to rise above it all, and make her way among the rest of the girls;
but she has a hard time of it, I guess, poor child."

"I don't wonder," said Edith, "with such a father."

But between the punch and fatigue, she was glad to take refuge from
the landlady's garrulousness, and all her troubles in quiet sleep.

The next morning the storm was passing away in broken masses of cloud,
through which the sun occasionally shone in April-like uncertainty.

After an early breakfast she and Hannibal were driven in an open wagon
to what was to be her future home--the scene of unknown joys and
sorrows.

The most memorable places, where the mightiest events of the world
have transpired, can never have for us the interest of that humble
spot where the little drama of our own life will pass from act to act
till our exit.

Most eagerly did Edith note everything as revealed by the broad light
of day. The village, though irregular, had a general air of
thriftiness and respectability. The street through which she was
riding gradually fringed off, from stores and offices, into neat
homes, farmhouses, and here and there the abodes of the poor, till at
last, three-quarters of a mile out, she saw a rather quaint little
cottage with a roof steeply sloping and a long low porch.

"That's your place, miss," said the driver.

Edith's intent eyes took in the general effect with something of the
practiced rapidity with which she mastered a lady's toilet on the
avenue.

In spite of her predisposition to be pleased, the prospect was
depressing. The season was late and patches of discolored snow lay
here and there, and were piled up along the fences. The garden and
trees had a neglected look. The vines that clambered up the porch had
been untrimmed of the last year's growth, and sprawled in every
direction. The gate hung from one hinge, and many palings were off the
fence, and all had a sodden, dingy appearance from the recent rains.
The house itself looked so dilapidated and small, in contrast with
their stately mansion on Fifth Avenue, that irrepressible tears came
into her eyes, as she murmured:

"It will kill mother just to see it."

Old Hannibal said in a low, encouraging tone, "It'll look a heap
better next June, Miss Edie."

But Edith dropped her veil to hide her feelings, and shook her head.

They got down before the rickety gate, took out the basket of
provisions which Hannibal had secured, paid the driver, who splashed
away through the mud as a boat might that had landed and left two
people on a desert island. They walked up the oozy path with hearts
about as chill and empty as the unfurnished cottage before them.

But utter repulsiveness had been taken away by a bright fire that
Arden had kindled on the hearth of the largest room; and when lighting
it he had been so romantic as to dream of the possibility of kindling
a more sacred fire in a heart that he knew now to be as cold to him as
the chilly room in which he shivered.

Poor Arden! If he could have seen the expression on Edith's face the
night previous, as she looked on his besotted father, he would have
cursed more bitterly than ever what he termed the blight of his life.




CHAPTER X

EDITH BECOMES A "DIVINITY"



As the wrecked would hasten up the strand and explore eagerly in
various directions in order to gain some idea of the nature and
resources of the place where they might spend months and even years,
so Edith hurriedly passed from one room to another, looking the house
over first, as their place of refuge and centre of life, and then went
out to a spot from which she could obtain a view of the garden, the
little orchard, and the pasture field.

The house had three rooms on the first floor, as many on the second,
and a very small attic. There was also a pretty good cellar, though it
looked to Edith like a black, dismal hole, and was full of rubbish and
old boxes.

The entrance of the house was at the commencement of the porch, which
ran along under the windows of the large front room. Back of this was
one much smaller, and doors opened from both the apartments named into
a long and rather narrow room running the full depth of the house, and
which had been designed as the kitchen. With the families that would
naturally occupy a house of this character, it would have been the
general living-room. To Edith's eyes, accustomed to magnificent spaces
and lofty ceilings, these apartments seemed stifling dingy cells. The
walls were broken in places and discolored by smoke. With the
exception of the large room there were no places for open fires, but
only holes for stovepipes.

"How can such a place as this ever look homelike?"

The muddy garden, with its patches of snow, its forlorn and neglected
air, its spreading vines and the thickly standing stalks of last
year's weeds, was even less inviting. Edith had never seen the country
in winter, and the gardens of her experience were full of green,
beautiful life. The orchard looked not only gaunt and bare, but very
untidy. The previous year had been most abundant in fruit, and the
trees were left to bear at will. Therefore many of the limbs were
wholly or partly broken off, and lay scattered where they fell, or
still hung by a little of the woody fibre and bark.

Edith came back to the fire from the survey of her future home, not
only chilled in body by the raw April winds, but more chilled in
heart. Though she had not expected summer greenness and a sweet
inviting home, yet the reality was so dreary and forbidding, from its
necessary contrast with the past, that she sank down on the floor, and
buried her head in her lap in an uncontrollable passion of grief.
Hannibal was out gathering wood to replenish the fire, and it was a
luxury to be alone a few minutes with her sorrow.

But soon she had the consciousness that she was not alone, and looking
up, saw Arden in the door, with a grave troubled face. Hastily turning
from him, and wiping away her tears, she said rather coldly:

"You should have knocked. The house is my home, if it is empty."

His face changed instantly to its usual hard sullen aspect, and he
said briefly:

"I did knock."

"The landlady has told her all about us," he thought, "and she rejects
sympathy and fellowship from such as we are."

But Edith's feeling had only been annoyance that a stranger had seen
her emotion, so she said quickly, "I beg your pardon. We have had
trouble, but I don't give way in this manner often. Have you brought a
load?"

"Yes. If your servant will help me I will bring the things in."

As he and Hannibal carried in heavy rolls of carpet and other
articles, Edith removed as far as possible the traces of her grief,
and soon began to scan by the light of day with some curiosity her
acquaintance of the previous evening. He was the very opposite to
herself in appearance. Her eyes were large and dark. He had a rather
small but piercing blue eye. His locks were light and curly, and his
beard sandy. Her hair was brown and straight. He was fully six feet
tall, while she was only of medium height. And yet Edith was not a
brunette, but possessed a complexion of transparent delicacy which
gave her the fragile appearance characteristic of so many American
girls. His face was much tamed by exposure to March winds, but his
brow was as white as hers. In his morbid tendency to shun every one,
he usually kept his eyes fixed on the ground so as to appear not to
see people, and this, with his habitual frown, gave a rather heavy and
repelling expression to his face.

"He would make a very good representative of the laboring classes,"
she thought, "if he hadn't so disagreeable an expression."

It had only dimly dawned upon poor Edith as yet that she now belonged
to the "laboring classes."

But her energetic nature soon reacted against idle grieving, and her
pale cheeks grew rosy, and her face full of eager life as she assisted
and directed.

"If I only had one or two women to help me we could soon get things
settled," she said, "and I have so little time before the rest come."

Then she added suddenly to Arden, "Haven't you sisters?"

"My sister does not go out to service," said Arden proudly.

"Neither do I," said the shrewd Edith, "but I would be willing to help
any one in such an emergency as I am in," and she glanced keenly to
see the effect of this speech, while she thought, "What airs these
people put on!"

Arden's face changed instantly. Her words seemed like a ray of
sunlight falling on a place before shadowed, for the sullen frowning
expression passed into one almost of gentleness, as he said:

"That puts things in a different light. I am sure Rose and mother both
will be willing to help you as neighbors," and he started for another
load, going around by the way of his home and readily obtaining from
his mother and sister a promise to assist Edith after dinner.

Edith smiled to herself and said, "I have found the key to his surly
nature already." She had, and to many other natures also. Kindness and
human fellowship will unbar and unbolt where all other forces may
clamor in vain.

Arden went away in a maze of new sensations. This one woman of all the
world beside his mother and sister that he had come to know somewhat
was to him a strange, beautiful mystery. Edith was in many respects
conventional, as all society girls are, but it was the conventionality
of a sphere of life that Arden knew only through books, and she seemed
to him utterly different from the ladies of Pushton as he understood
them from his slight acquaintance. This difference was all in her
favor, for he cherished a bitter and unreasonable prejudice against
the young girls of his neighborhood as vain, shallow creatures who
never read, and thought of nothing save dress and beaux. His own
sister in fact had helped to confirm these impressions, for while he
was fond of her and kind, he had no great admiration for her, saying
in his sweeping cynicism, "She is like the rest of them." If he had
met Edith only in the street and in conventional ways, stylishly
dressed, he would scarcely have noticed her. But her half-indignant,
half-pathetic appeal to him on the dock, the lonely ride in which she
had clung to his arm for safety, her tears, and the manner in which
she had last spoken to him, had all combined to pierce thoroughly his
shell of sullen reserve; and, as we have said, his vivid imagination
had taken fire.

Edith and Hannibal worked hard the rest of the forenoon, and her
experienced old attendant was invaluable. Edith herself, though having
little practical knowledge of work of any kind, had vigor and natural
judgment, and her small white hands accomplished more than one would
suppose.

So Arden wonderingly thought on his return with a second load, as he
saw her lift and handle things that he knew to be heavy. Her short,
close-fitting working-dress outlined her fine figure to advantage, and
with complexion bright and dazzling with exercise, she seemed to him
some frail fairylike creature doomed by a cruel fate to unsuited toil
and sorrows. But Edith was very matter-of-fact, and had never in all
her life thought of herself as a fairy.

Arden went home to dinner, and by one o'clock Edith said to Hannibal:

"There is one good thing about the place if no other. It gives one a
savage appetite. What have you got in the basket?"

"A scrumptious lunch, Miss Edie. I told de landlady you'se used to
havin' things mighty nice, and den I found a hen's nest in de barn dis
mornin'."

"I hope you didn't take the eggs, Hannibal," said Edith slyly.

"Sartin I did, Miss Edie, cause if I didn't de rats would."

"Perhaps the landlady would also if you had shown them to her."

"Miss Edie," said Hannibal solemnly, "findin' a hen's nest is like
findin' a gold mine. It belongs to de one dat finds it."

"I am afraid that wouldn't stand in law. Suppose we were arrested for
robbing hens' nests. That wouldn't be a good introduction to our new
neighbors."

"Now, Miss Edie," said Hannibal, with an injured air, "you don't spec
I do a job like dat so bungly as to get cotched at it?"

"Oh, very well," said Edith, laughing, "since you have conformed to
the morality of the age, it must be all right, and a fresh egg would
be a rich treat now that it can be eaten with a clear conscience. But,
Hannibal, I wish you would find a gold mine out in the garden."

"I guess you'se find dat with all your readin' about strawberries and
other yarbs."

"I hope so," said Edith with a sigh, "for I don't see how we are going
to live here year after year."

"You'se be rich again. De men wid de long pusses ain't agoin' to look
at your black eyes for nothin'," and Hannibal chuckled knowingly.

The color faintly deepened in Edith's cheeks, but she said with some
scorn, "Men with long purses want girls with the same. But who are
these?"

Coming up the path they saw a tall middle-aged woman, and by her side
a young girl of about eighteen who was a marked contrast to her in
appearance.

"Dey's his moder and sister. You will drive tings dis arternoon."

Mrs. Lacey and her daughter entered with some little hesitancy and
embarrassment, but Edith, with the poise of an accomplished lady, at
once put them at ease by saying:

"It is exceedingly kind of you to come and help, and I appreciate it
very much."

"No one should refuse to be neighborly," said Mrs. Lacey quietly.

"And to tell the truth I was delighted to come," said Rose, "the
winter has been so long and dull."

"Oh, dear!" thought Edith, "if you find them so, what will be our
fate?"

Mrs. Lacey undid a bundle and took out a teapot from which the steam
yet oozed faintly, and Rose undid another containing some warm
buttered biscuits, Mrs. Lacey saying, "I thought your lunch might seem
a little cold and cheerless, so I brought these along."

"Now that _is_ kind," said Edith, so cordially that their faces
flushed with that natural pleasure which we all feel when our little
efforts for others are appreciated. To them it was intensified, for
Edith was a grand city lady, and the inroads that she made on the
biscuits, and the zest with which she sipped her tea, showed that her
words had the ring of truth.

"Do sit down and eat, while things are nice and warm," she said to
Hannibal. "There's no use in our putting on airs now," but Hannibal
insisted on waiting upon her as when he was butler in the great
dining-room on the avenue, and when she was through, carried the
things off to the empty kitchen, and took his "bite" on a packing box,
prefacing it as his nearest approach to grace by an indignant grunt
and profession of his faith.

"Dis ole niggah eat before her? Not much! She's quality now as much as
eber."

But the world and Hannibal were at variance on account of a sum of
subtraction which had taken away from Edith's name the dollar symbol.

Edith set to work, her helpers now increased to three, with renewed
zest, and from time to time stole glances at the mother and daughter
to see what the natives were like.

They were very different in appearance: the mother looking prematurely
old, and she also seemed bent and stooping under the heavy burdens of
life. Her dark blue eyes had a weary, pathetic look, as if some sorrow
was ever before them. Her cheek bones were prominent and her cheeks
sunken, and the thin hair, brushed plainly under her cap, was streaked
with gray. Her quietness and reserve seemed rather the result of a
crushed, sad heart than of natural lack of feeling.

The daughter was in the freshest bloom of youth, and was not unlike
the flower she was named after, when, as a dewy bud, it begins to
develop under the morning sun. Though not a beautiful girl, there was
a prettiness, a rural breeziness about her, that would cause any one
to look twice as she passed. The wind ever seemed to be in her light
flaxen curls, and her full rounded figure suggested superabundant
vitality, an impression increased by her quick, restless motions. Her
complexion reminded you of strawberries and cream, and her blue eyes
had a slightly bold and defiant expression. She felt the blight of her
father's course also, but it acted differently on her temperament.
Instead of timidly shrinking from the world like her mother, or
sullenly ignoring it like her brother, she was for going into society
and compelling it to recognize and respect her.

"I have done nothing wrong," she said; "I insist on people treating me
in view of what I am myself," and in the sanguine spirit of youth she
hoped to carry her point. Therefore her manner was a little self-
asserting, which would not have been the case had she not felt that
she had prejudice to overcome. Unlike her brother, she cared little
for books, and had no ideal world, but lived vividly in her immediate
surroundings. The older she grew, the duller and more monotonous did
her home life seem. She had little sympathy from her brother; her
mother was a sad, silent woman, and her father a daily source of
trouble and shame. Her education was very imperfect, and she had no
resource in this, while her daily work seemed a tiresome round that
brought little return. Her mother attended to the more important
duties and gave to her the lighter tasks, which left her a good deal
of leisure. She had no work that stimulated her, no training that made
her thorough in any department of labor, however humble. From a
friend, a dressmaker in the village, she obtained a little fancy work
and sewing, and the proceeds resulting, and all her brother gave her,
she spent in dress. The sums were small enough in all truth, and yet
with the marvellous ingenuity that some girls, fond of dress, acquire,
she made a very little go a great way, and she would often appear in
toilets that were quite effective. With those of her own age and sex
in her narrow little circle, she was not a special favorite, but she
was with the young men, for she was bright, chatty, and had the knack
of putting awkward fellows at ease. She kept her little parlor as
pretty and inviting as her limited materials permitted, and with a
growing imperiousness gave the rest of the family, and especially her
father, to understand that this parlor was her domain, and that she
would permit no intrusion. Clerks from the village and farmers' sons
would occasionally drop in of an evening, though they preferred taking
her out to ride where they could see her away from her home. But the
more respectable young men, with anxious mothers and sisters, were
rather shy of poor Rose, and none seemed to care to go beyond a mild
flirtation with a girl whose father was "on the rampage," as they
expressed it, most of the time. On one occasion, when she had two
young friends spending the evening, her father came home reckless and
wild with drink, and his language toward the young men was so
shocking, and his manner in general so outrageous, that they were glad
to get away. If Arden had not come home and collared his father,
carrying him off to his room by his almost irresistible strength,
Rose's parlor might have become a sad wreck, literally as well as
socially. As it was, it seemed deserted for a long time, and she felt
very bitter about it. In her fearless frankness, her determination not
to succumb to her sinister surroundings (and perhaps from the lack of
a sensitive delicacy), she reproached the same young men when she met
them for staying away, saying, "It's a shame to treat a girl as if she
were to blame for what she can't help."

But Rose's ambition had put on a phase against which circumstances
were too strong, and she was made to feel in her struggle to gain a
social footing that her father's leprosy had tainted her, and her
brother's "ugly, sullen disposition," as it was termed, was a
hindrance also. She had an increasing desire to get away among
strangers, where she could make her own way on her own merits, and the
city of New York seemed to her a great Eldorado, where she might find
her true career. Some very showily dressed, knowing-looking girls,
that she had met at a picnic, had increased this longing for the city.
Her mother and brother thought her restless, vain, and giddy, but she
was as good and honest a girl at heart as breathed, only her vigorous
nature chafed at repression, wanted outlets, and could not settle down
for life to cook, wash, and sew for a drunken father, a taciturn
brother, or even a mother whose companionship was depressing, much as
she was loved.

Rose welcomed the request of her brother, as helping Edith would cause
a ripple in the current of her dull life, and give her a chance of
seeing one of the grand city ladies, without the dimness and vagueness
of distance, and she scanned Edith with a stronger curiosity than was
bestowed upon herself. The result was rather depressing to poor Rose,
for, having studied with her quick nice eye Edith's exquisite manner
and movements, she sighed to herself:

"I'm not such a lady as this girl, and perhaps never can be."

While Edith was very kind and cordial to the Laceys, she felt, and
made them feel, that there was a vast social distance between them.
Even practical Edith had not yet realized her poverty, and it would
take her some time to doff the manner of the condescending lady.

They accomplished a great deal that afternoon, but it takes much time
and labor to make even a small empty house look home-like. Edith had
taken the smallest room upstairs, and by evening it was quite in order
for her occupation, she meaning to take Zell in with her. Work had
progressed in the largest upper room, which she designed for her
mother and Laura. Mrs. Lacey and Hannibal were in the kitchen getting
that arranged, they very rightly concluding that this was the
mainspring in the mechanism of material living, and should be put in
readiness at once. Arden had been instructed to purchase and bring
from the village a cooking-stove, and Hannibal's face shone with
something like delight, as by five o'clock he had a wood fire
crackling underneath a pot of water, feeling that the terra firma of
comfort was at last reached. He could now _soak_ in his favorite
beverage of tea, and make Miss Edie quite "pertlike" too when she was
tired.

Mrs. Lacey worked silently. Rose was inclined to be chatty and draw
Edith out in regard to city life. She responded good-naturedly as long
as Rose confined herself to generalities, but was inclined to be
reticent on their own affairs.

Before dark the Laceys prepared to return, the mother saying gravely:

"You may feel it too lonely to stay by yourself. Our house is not very
inviting, and my husband's manner is not always what I could wish, but
such as it is, you will be welcome in it till the rest of your family
comes."

"You are very kind to a stranger," said Edith, heartily, "but I am not
a bit afraid to stay here since I have Hannibal as protector," and
Hannibal, elated by this compliment, looked as if he might be a very
dragon to all intruders. "Moreover," continued Edith, "you have helped
me so _splendidly_ that I shall be very comfortable, and they will be
here to-morrow night."

Mrs. Lacey bowed silently, but Rose said in her sprightly voice, from
the doorway:

"I'll come and help you all day to-morrow."

Arden was still to bring one more load. The setting sun, with the
consistency of an April day, had passed into a dark cloud which soon
came driving on with wind and rain, and the thick drops dashed against
the windows as if thrown from a vast syringe, while the gutter gurgled
and groaned with the sudden rush of water.

"Oh, dear! how dismal!" sighed Edith, looking out in the gathering
darkness. Then she saw that the loaded wagon had just stopped at the
gate, and in dim outline Arden sat in the storm as if he had been a
post. "It's too bad," she said impatiently, "my things will all get
wet." After a moment she added: "Why don't he come in? Don't he know
enough to come in out of the rain?"

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.