A Daily Rate (14 page)

Then they parted with a smile of perfect understanding, and aunt Hannah went to her new duties with enthusiasm. There were a few things she meant to have radically different in some of her guests’ sleeping rooms before that day drew to a close, and there was much planning and marketing to do. Molly Poppleton was in her element in the kitchen. Miss Hannah could hear her voice singing above the clatter of pots and pans,

“What though the spicy breezes

Blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle;

Though every prospect pleases,

And only man is vile;—”

Molly was cleaning out the departed Maggie’s kettle closet under the back stairs, and stopped occasionally in her singing to express her mind as to some dirty corner and then went on—

“In vain with lavish kindness

The gifts of God are strewn;

The heathen in his blindness,

Bows down to wood and stone!”

Aunt Hannah smiled as she went upstairs. She knew that the good-hearted Molly was mingling the theme of her song with her own thoughts about the dirty house and the need of the boarders and that she would work it all out by and by.

“Shall we whose souls are lighted

With wisdom from on high,

Shall we to men benighted,

The lamp of life deny?”

went on the singer, and Miss Hannah knew the hard working singer’s thought was that she would make a cheerful, clean house and good food, and give the rest of them a chance to try and help save the poor city heathen boarders, for Molly Poppleton looked upon all native city boarders as heathen in the truest sense of the word, and she had taken with joy the few words Miss Hannah had spoken to her about the mission they were going to try to start, the mission of making one bright little clean home spot for a few people who had hitherto been in discomfort.

The dining-room windows were washed that morning, and several other windows, and Molly Poppleton sang a great many of Isaac Watts’ hymns through before she prepared lunch for herself and Miss Hannah. She did not remember when she had been so happy. Neither, indeed, did Miss Hannah.

It had been the one great ambition of Hannah Grant’s life, since she had lost the love of her youth, and been made to see that hers was not to go on the great mission of salvation to the heathen of other nations, that she should have some spot which she could call her own, where she might exercise her powers of helping people. And now it seemed as though she was to have opportunity. She thanked her heavenly Father every hour, even for the dirt and desolation of the place, because he had given to her the sweet privilege of brightening a place that had hitherto been dark.

It was after dinner. The minister was in his room writing to his mother, before he went out to a meeting at the mission. Down in the parlor the brakeman sat at the organ accompanying himself as he sang in stentorian voice the touching ballad of

“Granny’s only left to me her old armchair.”

Celia smiled as she ran upstairs where her aunt was waiting for the conference.

“Just listen, auntie dear, did you ever hear the like,” she said, putting her head in at the door, and the words of the chorus in decided nasal twang floated up the two flights of stairs:

“How they tittered, how they chaffed,

How my brothers and my sisters laughed,

When they heard the lawyers declare,

Granny’s only left to me her old armchair,”

“Do you really think, aunt Hannah, that it’s any use to try to reach and help people who have that sort of taste in music, even if you try through their taste in buckwheat cakes?”

Celia’s face was gay with laughter, but there was an undertone of trouble in it which Miss Hannah detected and understood.

“Deane, Christ died for him, even if he does seem to be too course-grained to understand the little refining influences you are trying to weave around him. Yes, of course it is worthwhile. You can’t expect him to turn into a person with the tastes of a Beethoven. You are not that yourself, remember, and it’s all in the scale of life. But I know what you mean, and I do think it’s worthwhile to try. You see if it wasn’t, God wouldn’t have put him just here for us to try on. You mustn’t expect the same result as you would from—”

“From your new boarder, auntie? The gambler with the smile you mean?” Celia was laughing now, for both had seen with the morning light that whatever else their new boarder was, he was a man to be trusted.

“Yes,” said aunt Hannah. “You mustn’t expect the same results from trying to help this man that you would the other, but you’ll find he will have a depth to his nature which you don’t suspect, if you look for it. Listen! He is singing something else. It may give you a clue.”

Again the voice rang out deeply, pathetically and nasally,

“Lost on the Lady Elgin,

Slumbering to wake no more,

\Numbering about three hundred, —

Who failed to reach the store.”

“Oh, auntie, I can’t stand another line,” said Celia rushing into the room and throwing herself on the bed in a paroxysm of laughter. “To have those awful words in that ludicrous song roared out in that dramatic way is too, too funny. And he asked me if I would sing ‘Where is my wandering boy to-night?’ with him. How could I?”

“Now, dear girl,” said aunt Hannah sitting down on the bed beside her, “perhaps that is just your chance. Sing ‘Where is my wandering boy tonight?’ with him some time. You may be able to help him to higher, more refining things in some way, even if he does continue to amuse you with his music. If you want to help all these people, you will have to do as Paul did and be all things to all men, that you may by all means save some.”

Celia sobered down at once.

“Yes, I know, aunt Hannah, but somehow I never could be that, unless I was interested in people. It troubles me sometimes, but this black-eyebrowed, smiling, conceited brakeman isn’t in the least attractive. Now that boy Harry Knowles is. I feel sorry for him. He misses his mother, and I’m afraid he goes with a wild set. I got him to fix some chairs last night and he seemed interested and stayed at home. But to-night he slipped out just before I came up, and looked the other way when I came down the hall, as if he didn’t want me to see him and ask him to stay in, at least I fancy that was the reason, because I’ve asked him to stay once or twice. It worries me to think he is going wrong, and I feel as if I could pray all night that God would save him. I can’t get away from that look in the eyes of his mother’s picture. He brought it down to the parlor one night and showed it to me. And he is so young, only just eighteen. Auntie, I want to do so much for the people, do you suppose God will let me do something at least?”

“Dear child,” said aunt Hannah as she bent over and kissed her, “I feel sure he will, and he will hear your prayers and help you to-work in the right way and to be interested in the uninteresting, too. And now get your pencil and paper and let’s go to work.”

Celia sprang up and soon they were hard at work.

“What I want to do is this, aunt Hannah,” said Celia. “I want to make this as pleasant a home for us all, as it can be made on the money that we all pay in for our board. You and I will pay ours too, you know, that is if it can’t be run without that, and then we’ll just have things as nice as we can on that. If we need anything extra, why you and I can count that a gift, you know, from our allowance. But to be strictly honest as a boarding-house, and not a charitable institution, we ought to run it on what is paid in, oughtn’t we? I would like to prove that a boarding-house can be comfortable as well as cheap. Do you think it can be done?”

“I do,” said the elder woman, thoughtfully. “I have done some careful thinking myself, and I think it can. I shall enjoy trying, anyway.”

“And auntie, there’s another thing; this allowance of mine is half yours you know. I won’t have it any other way. You and I have nine hundred dollars a year to live on, besides what is now in the bank in cash, and we can do what we please with it, give it away if we want to. If we can make this house pay our board, then we will have the rest to live on. But if we can’t, we’ll run the house up to the fill] extent of what we can afford to put into it, for a few months at least, just to give these poor souls a taste of something like home. I would rather do that than give my money somewhere else, for I think they all need it. Do you think, auntie, we have enough money to start on to hope to make things go nicely at the beginning? Nine hundred dollars a year seems to me a great deal of money, but people say that money doesn’t go far in the city.”

Celia’s brow was clouded as she spoke.

“There goes my girl down into the cellar of despair over a thought,” said aunt Hannah, leaning over to smooth the pucker out of her niece’s brow. “I wish you would get just a little more trust in your heavenly Father, that he will take care of the work he has put into your hands, and see that it prospers in spite of your worries. Now tell me everything you know about this house and the way it is run.”

AUNT Hannah and Celia had finished the last puzzling question, added up the final row of figures, and were peacefully sleeping in their beds. All the lights in the house were out, when there was heard a loud noise at the street door, as if someone was thrown, or threw himself, several times heavily against it. This was followed by voices talking loud and excitedly, and then in more muffled tones. The door knob was turned and rattled, and a latch-key clicked and half turned in the lock as if handled by clumsy or unacquainted fingers.

The minister heard the noise first, as his room was over the front of the house, and rising he opened his window and tried to speak and quiet the disturbance, but he received only curses for his interference, and he thought he recognized in one of the midnight revelers the form of one of the boarders. Closing his window, he dressed as rapidly as possible, that he might go down if his assistance was needed. By the time he was halfway down the stairs, however, and was just striking a match, the fumbling latch-key at last turned, and the door burst open, literally tumbling into the hall three young men just at Horace Stafford’s feet. Miss Grant and Celia, though they slept on the third floor, were near the stair landing and had at last heard the noise. They had slipped on wrappers and slippers and stood at the head of the stairs just above Mr. Stafford, as he struck the light.

“What does this mean?” said aunt Hannah, in as stern a voice as she could muster, with Celia, bewildered and trembling, clinging to her arm and begging her to come back.

But there was too much disturbance below for her to be heard, and she and Celia could but stand and watch.

The new boarder seemed to know what to do in the present emergency. He promptly lighted the gas, turning it up to its full strength, and then extricated the three young men, who seemed to be in a helplessly tangled condition on the floor at his feet. Two of them were promptly withdrawn from the hall by their comrades outside, and the one left stood miserably against the wall and looked about him.

It was hard to recognize in this dirty, rough fellow with bloodshot eyes and white face, the gay, bright young man who always looked so neat, and whom everybody liked and called “Harry.”

“Oh, auntie, that is Harry Knowles,” said Celia, in horrified tones, and then the young man looked up.

“Hulloa, Celia,” he called, in a pitifully bright voice, “is that you? Yes, I’m here all right, only I’ve been out on a lark and the lark’s gone to my head. Come down, and talk to a fellow a While, just for a change, you know.”

Celia shrank back in dismay, as she saw the poor fellow stagger toward the stairs and heard him say, “Can’t you get down? Well, I’ll come up and get you. Awful shaky stairs, I know, but I’ll manage ’em yet, don’t you be afraid.”

And then a strong hand grasped his arm and a clear, commanding voice said,

“Stand right where you are! Don’t stir a step, and don’t speak another word to those ladies.” Then the minister turned to the frightened women and said in low tones,

“Don’t be afraid, go to your rooms and I will take care of him.” Harry had sat stupidly down on the stairs saying meekly, 

“All right, cap’n, jes’s you say. You’re boss, an’ I’m sleepy.”

Miss Hannah took assurance from the calm face and powerful frame of her new boarder and led Celia away, while the minister carefully and even tenderly helped the young man to his room and took care of him as if he had been his own brother.

Miss Hannah had her hands full with Celia. The young girl had thrown herself on the bed in a violent fit of weeping, and it required all her aunt’s persuasive powers to quiet her and try to soothe her to sleep. Celia had not been accustomed to young men who drank. Her cousins had been steady, whatever else they might not have been. She had never seen a man come home at night drunk, and she had never been spoken to by one.

The familiar tone and the vacant, silly stare with which the young man had looked up at her had given her a shock she could not forget. Whenever she tried to be quiet and sit up and listen to aunt Hannah, she would shudder again at the thought of the scene she had just witnessed. By and by, when she was calmer she wailed out,

“Now we shall have to give up the whole thing, auntie. We can’t have people getting drunk,” and she shuddered again.