A Daily Rate (17 page)

Molly slammed out of the kitchen and Miss Hannah heard her sweeping the dining-room with all her might and main.

She went on measuring her milk and beating her eggs, and fashioning the flaky crust in the pie pans, and thinking. The fact was she had been troubled about those two girls herself. She felt that they needed a great deal of help and so far she had been utterly unable to approach them. They seemed shy and uncomfortable when she came near them, and had grown silent at the table, too, unless the tenor brakeman was present. Then the three carried on a bantering conversation in suppressed tones, with half glances toward the others. Miss Grant wondered why it was that there always seemed to be some people about her whose hearts she could not reach. It was just so with Nettie, she never could make any headway in training that child. As a little girl, she had been sullen and silent when she was remonstrated with by her aunt for any fault, and as a young woman she had been impertinent and cold for days after any attempt on the part of aunt Hannah to change her plans. With Hiram too, aunt Hannah had felt the same repellent influence and she wondered why it was, though she had prayerfully and conscientiously longed to be to these people what God wanted her to be, that she did not seem able to reach their hearts in any way. Now these two girls weighed heavily upon her. She had watched them for days and had determined to make some move pretty soon. She felt sure there was need of help for them, and urgent need, far beyond what Molly had bluntly expressed. And while aunt Hannah weighed and measured and baked and thought, she was making in her mind a plan for the salvation of Mamie Williams and Carrie Simmons.

She had noticed Mamie several times lately when Celia came to the table, and she knew that she watched Celia intently and admired her afar, at least she admired her in so far as outward adornments were concerned. Even during the few weeks since aunt Hannah had come to Philadelphia, she had noticed the gradual change in Mamie’s dress, from gay and fussy and Frivolous, to a style somewhat more subdued and neat. She had reduced the baggy bunches of frizzy hair that used to project over her forehead and loop far down over her ears, till they were more like Celia’s graceful braids with a stray curl slipping out here and there. She still wore her many colored finger rings, but there were other little changes about her that showed she was to a certain extent making Celia a model just now. Aunt Hannah’s brow cleared. She thought she knew a way to Mamie’s heart and perhaps through hers to Carrie’s. Celia had an influence and she could help. But how to bring that about in the wisest way, that was aunt Hannah’s puzzle, for Celia was very much disgusted with the actions of the two “three-centers” as she called them. She never noticed them in any way, and her dignified bearing at the table was always meant to be a rebuke to them. Celia did not like those two girls, and while she was willing that their lives should be made more comfortable by their sharing in the good food that aunt Hannah now provided for Mrs. Morris’ old boarders, still Celia would not have felt badly to have had them leave that their places might be occupied by more interesting people.

Celia was getting to be a sort of a puzzle anyway. She did not enter into some things as her aunt had supposed she would. Instead she held aloof, and seemed troubled about something. She did not even make friends with the young minister, in whom aunt Hannah saw growing possibilities of a valued friendship for them all. He and she had talked together on the themes of mutual interest, and he had shown that he was a man of culture and education. Aunt Hannah was not a matchmaker, and did not immediately think of every young man in the light of a possible husband for her dear Celia, but she did have ambitions that Celia might have friends who would be helpful in every way to her, both spiritually and mentally, and she felt that such a friendship, though it were nothing more than occasional converse on some literary theme, would be excellent for the young girl whose ambitions and abilities were so far beyond her opportunities. But Celia only smiled, and remained quiet and distant, and told aunt Hannah that the young minister belonged to her, and she must not expect her niece to take him on faith. Nevertheless, she knew that no movement or word of Mr. Stafford’s at the table escaped Celia. It was evident that she was measuring him.

Celia had not entered very heartily into the plans made for Harry Knowles. She had done what she was told, it was true, but she had not made plans herself She seemed to have received a set-back on the night when Harry came home drunk. There had been much to do in the evening, however, and her aunt had not had time to have a good long talk with her. She felt it ought to come at once. She put the pies in the oven, closed the oven door carefully, and glancing at the clock went to her own room to kneel as was her custom in perplexity and lay her trouble all at her Master’s feet. Then she came back to her work about the house with calm brow and untroubled heart, feeling sure the way would be opened and words given her, if she must speak. She would have made a good model for a study of a saint as she stood beside the moulding board soon after and patted the smooth, light loaves into shape for their last rising, bending her sweet, thoughtful face to her work, her mind busy with the problems of souls, while she worked with her hands to feed their bodies.

It was like a revelation of what God can do in a human soul through sorrow, to look at Hannah Grant and think of her past life with its buried and risen joys.

Methinks we do as fretfi4l children do, 

Leaning their faces on the window pane

To sigh the glass dim with their own breath’s stain,

And shut the sky and landscape from their view. 

And thus, alas! since God, the Maker, drew 

A mystic separation ‘twixt those twain, 

The lye beyond us, and our souls in pain, 

We miss the prospect which we’re called unto 

By grief we’re fools to use. Be still and strong, 

O man, my brother! hold thy sobbing breath,

And keep thy soul’s large window pure from wrong, 

That so, as life’s appointment issueth, 

Thy vision may be clear to watch along 

The sunset consummation-lights of death.

“Auntie, who is the youth in the parlor so redolent of Hoyt’s German cologne and cigarette smoke?” asked Celia, gaily, coming into her aunt’s room just after dinner that night. “You opened the door for him, you ought to know. I do hope he is not a new boarder, for I’m morally certain he wouldn’t be any help, and I think we have enough heathen to work for at present, don’t you? Now don’t tell me you called me up to ask my permission to take in that oily-looking youth, aunt Hannah.”

Aunt Hannah laughed and then grew grave.

“No, dear, not that,” she said, and then she drew the little rocker close beside her own and said “Sit down, dear, I want to talk to you.”

“Why, aunt Hannah, what have I been doing that’s naughty?” asked Celia, pretending to be scared. “This sounds like old times,” but she settled herself comfortably and nestled her head lovingly on her aunt’s shoulder.

“Well, then, first of all, Celia, why do you act so strangely sometimes, and what is the matter with Mr. Stafford? You and he ought to be friends, and he could help much in the work you planned we should do together. You seem to me to have lost your interest in the house and everything in it, and I do not understand it. There is much that you could do and ought to do at once, and you do not seem to care to go about it.”

“Why, aunt Hannah, what has the minister to do with it all? I am afraid you are mistaken in him as a helper. In fact I know you arc. I had just come home that night— the night after Harry had been drinking, you know,— and was passing the door, and I heard Mr. Stafford’s laugh, and then I heard Harry laugh, too, and I couldn’t help hearing that Mr. Stafford was telling a funny story to Harry as I went on up the hall. Now just think of that after what had happened. A pretty minister he is, I think. He ought to have been preaching a sermon.”

“Celia! Take care how you judge without knowing. You cannot tell what may have been the pointed moral of the funny story, and you do not know but the Lord could use a laugh just then to help that young man better than anything else, and he doubtless put it into the heart of his servant to know that. I believe that man has rare tact in winning souls. Be very careful, and be very slow ever to criticize the actions of a minister. His office brings him nearer to God than most men.”

Celia’s cheeks flushed a little. She was slightly annoyed to have her aunt speak in that way, but she respected the elder woman’s opinion too much to resent the words or refuse the lesson. After a moment she said:

“Well, aunt Hannah, maybe I have been wrong, I’ll try to be good.” In her heart Celia had another reason for her dignified coldness toward the minister. She had recognized, after a few days that he was a man of unusual education and refinement. She immediately began to wonder whether or not he looked down upon her, a saleswoman in a store, a poor girl, who had to earn her own living. She settled it in her mind that he probably did in a certain undefined way, though he probably did not confess such things to himself as that might have conflicted with certain Christian theories he felt himself bound to abide by. She told herself that he should see that she never expected anything in the way of courtesy even from him, and that she was one girl in the world, who was not ready to fling herself forward for companionship with any desirable young man that should chance to be thrown in her neighborhood. She had been still further strengthened in her determination by a little occurrence one evening a few days before this talk with her aunt.

The minister had gone to prayer meeting, having been busily engaged in his room all day, so that aunt Hannah had not been able to finish certain dusting and setting to rights there as thoroughly as she desired. The evening had found her hands full of some kitchen work, and she had requested Celia to slip up there when the halls were quiet, while the occupant of the room was in meeting and finish the dusting. Celia had been glad to help. She had turned the gas up and gone to work in earnest, glancing interestedly at the rows of books over the little table against the wall, and wishing she had opportunity to look them over, but she would not put so much as a hand upon them except to do her necessary work, in the absence of their owner. When she came to the bureau she had to remove some things to wipe the dust off beneath them. A Bible was lying there open before a painted miniature of a most lovely young woman. The pictured face was so beautiful that she could not but look at it again as she carefully wiped the dust from the velvet and gold of its case. The blue eyes and golden hair and the sweet intellectual face stayed in her memory, and from the fact that the miniature stood open before his Bible, she judged it was of someone quite near and dear. Celia did not reason it out in words, but she thought it well that she should maintain a maidenly dignity. However, as her aunt talked, she saw that she had carried this feeling to an absurd extremity. What was it to her what the young man thought, or how many velvet-framed girls he carried in his pocket next his heart? She was in the same house with him and must treat him with Christian courtesy, and she need not necessarily make herself prominent before his eyes either. She would try to do differently. He should henceforth be as one of the other boarders to her.

“What else, auntie?” she asked, after a minute of thought, looking up.

“Harry, next,” said her aunt. “You ought to interest him in something occasionally, as you once told me you did in a lamp. He is having a very hard struggle to keep away from those companions who are after him every day now, Mr. Stafford says. He does all he can for him, but you know his meetings occupy so many evenings that he can do very little and he hasn’t thought it wise to try to take him to church yet. You know he’s nothing but a boy. He wants to be interested in something.”

“Yes,” said Celia, “I know. I’ll try. But, auntie, I can’t forget how he looked that night,” and she shuddered. “But I’ll try to get up something to help and that right away. Now what else? You always save the worst dose till the last, I know you of old. Which is it? Miss Burns or the tenor brakeman? Or--O auntie, now it isn’t those three-centers! Don’t tell me to try to do something for them, for I can’t,” and the girl put up her hands in mock horror.

Miss Grant detailed to her what she knew of them including an account of Molly’s moralizing on the subject, and Celia laughed, and then grew grave.

There came a call to the kitchen for Miss Grant then and she left Celia thinking. When she returned a few minutes later she was greeted with “Aunt Hannah, are those boards still in the cellar? Arc they of any use there? Because if they are not I’m going to make a cozy corner in the parlor if you don’t object. I’ve thought of a beautiful way. Harry will help, I’m sure. He sat in the parlor looking glum when I came up. Do you suppose I must get the three-centers to help? Would they come, do you think? And say, by the way, auntie, who did you say that oily youth in the parlor was?”

“His name, he said, was Mr. Clarence Jones and he asked for Miss Simmons. I called her and I think she went out with him, for I don’t see either of them about. I don’t know whether Mamie Williams is in her room or not. I think it would be a good plan to see. By all means make as many cozy corners as you please, dear, and the boards are of no use to Inc.”

Celia departed to find her helpers, and Miss Hannah locked the door and prayed for them before she went about darning some tablecloths.

“NOW, Harry, where are you going?” said Celia, with dismay in her voice, as she ran down the stairs and saw that young man with his overcoat on and his hat in his hand just opening the front door.

He started and looked guilty as she spoke. In truth, he had been sitting in the parlor for an hour trying to keep himself in the house, and away from an especially alluring evening the boys had held out as bait; and one, too, which seemed, from their account of it, to be perfectly harmless.