A Princess in Calico Part 6

_Chapter VIII_

IDEALISING THE REAL

'If you cannot realise your Ideal, you can at least idealise your Real.'

As the train slackened speed, Pauline lifted her eyes from the book which Richard Everidge had laid on the seat beside her, after giving her that last strong handshake, to see her father standing in front of the Sleepy Hollow Station. A great pity filled her heart--how worn and old he looked!

They had all wanted to accompany her part of the way, and Belle had pleaded to be allowed to go and help nurse, but she had said them nay.

She knew the accommodations of Hickory Farm, and it was easier to leave them where she had met them first, at the entrance of what would always be to her the city of delights.

Abraham Lincoln and the spring waggon! Had the whole beautiful summer been one delicious dream? Could it be only a week since she had stood entranced in that forest of flame? Here the leaves hung brown and shrivelled on the denuded branches, stray flakes of snow were in the air, and the early twilight fell chill and dreary.

'I'm terrible glad to see you, Pauline, though I hated to spoil your visit,' said Mr Harding, as he gave Abraham Lincoln a taste of the whip.

Pauline leaned towards him, and laid both hands upon his arm.

'Poor father! I am so sorry for you! Now tell me all about it.'

And the tired man turned to the daughter who for his sake had left ease and beauty and friends, and shifted to her shoulders the burden which he found too heavy for his own.

The children crowded to meet her as she stumbled through the narrow hall-way into the kitchen. How dark it was! Her quick glance comprehended the whole scene, and the contrast between it and that other home-coming smote her with a keen sense of physical pain. She looked at the solitary lamp with its grotesquely hideous ornament of red flannel, at Susan's expressionless, freckled face, at the boys in their copper-toed boots and overalls, at the good-natured, but hopelessly common-place Martha Spriggs, with her thin hair drawn tight into a k.n.o.b the size of a bullet, and her bare arms akimbo. 'Idealize her real!'

Would it be possible to idealize anything at Sleepy Hollow?

She got her welcome in various fashions.

'It's about time you were getting back!' exclaimed Mrs Harding from the bed on which she was forced to lie, in bitterness of spirit, with Polly by her side. 'I suppose nothing less than a stroke would have brought you. It beats me how people can be such sponges! I'm thankful I was never one to go trailin' about the country after my relations. I never was away from home more than a day in my life till I was married, and it's been nothing but work ever since, and now to be laid here like a useless log, with everything going hotfoot to destruction! It's a good thing you've come at last, for the children are makin' sawdust and splinters of every bit of crockery in the house, and that Martha Spriggs has no more management than a settin' hen. I don't suppose you'll be much better, though. You never did hev much of a head, an' now you've been up among the clouds so long, you'll be more like to sugar the b.u.t.ter and salt the pies than before.'

Pauline lifted Polly from her uncomfortable position with a warm glow about her heart, which all the sick woman's bitterness was powerless to quench. If she could see Richard Everidge, she would tell him that she did believe in alt.i.tudes now. It was possible even in the valleys to live above the clouds. 'Do not seek happiness,' Tryphosa had said, 'but harmony with G.o.d's will,' and G.o.d's will for her was Sleepy Hollow. 'It is not what we do, but what we are, dear child,' she seemed to hear her saying. She remembered reading that 'the smallest roadside pool has its water from heaven, and its gleam from the sun, and can hold the stars in its bosom, as well as the great ocean.' G.o.d could make a 'perfect Christian' even in Sleepy Hollow.

'I'm powerful glad ye've c.u.m, Pawliney,' said Martha Spriggs, as she followed her into the dairy after the meal was over. 'I'm that beset I dunno where I'm standin', for Miss Hardin's been as crooked as a snake fence, an' as contrairy as a yearlin' colt, an' the childern dew train awful.'

'Yer've got to tell me stories all night, miles of 'em,' said Lemuel, as he bestowed his small person on the floor, with his legs in the air.

'No, no, Lemuel, you're going right to bed, like a good little brother, so Polly can get to sleep. Poor Polly is so tired,' and Pauline walked up and down the floor of her tiny room trying to soothe the weary child.

'Hi! Poll's no 'count; she's only a gurl. I ain't goin' ter sleep nuther. I'm goin' ter stay up fer hours an' hours, an' if yer don't keep right on tellin' stories quick, I'll holler, an' that'll make mar mad, an' then she'll send par up with a stick ter beat me. I don't care, he don't hit ez hard as she duz, anyhow.'

'If you'll get undressed right away, Lemuel, I'll tell you about a little boy who lived with an' old, old man, and one night he couldn't sleep, but----'

'Huh! that's a Bible story. This ain't Sunday. Par never reads the Bible 'cept Sunday. I want 'em 'bout lions an' tigers, an' men tumblin' down mountains, and boys gettin' eaten by bears.'

'What did you do when I was away, Lemuel?'

His lower lip protruded ominously.

'Ain't had nuthin'. Martha Spriggs don't hev any. She only knows "the cow that jumped over the moon," an' that's no good: 'tain't true, nuther, fer our cows don't do it.'

No time the next morning for the long hours of delightful study. It was churning day, and there was baking to be done, and the mending was behindhand, and the children needed clothes; besides the numerous 'odd jobs' which Mrs Harding had deferred, but which she was prompt to require done as soon as she had some one besides Martha to call on. Then her meals must be given to her, and nothing tasted right, and the children were so noisy, and the older boys so uncouth.

Wearily Pauline toiled up the narrow stairs with Polly as the clock struck nine. She laid the sleeping child on her bed softly, so as not to wake Lemuel, and knelt down by the window. Not a sound broke the stillness. Her thoughts flew to the blue-draped chamber, and the soft lighted library, where she could almost see Uncle Robert and Aunt Rutha, and Belle and Richard, and Russell and Gwen. But they might not be there yet; they had set apart this night, she remembered, to run over for a look through the big telescope. Last week that was, before she had decided to come to Sleepy Hollow, and broken up all their happy plans.

Only last week! Then she thought of Tryphosa, lying with closed eyes in her darkened room, waiting patiently for the sleep which so often refused to come, while the angel of pain brooded over her pillow. Then her eyes sought the stars.

'You dear things!' she whispered. 'G.o.d put you in your places and told you to shine, and for all these hundreds of years you've just kept on shining. Oh! my lady, ask G.o.d to help me to make this dark place bright.'

She knelt on in the clear, cold moonlight until at last the hush of G.o.d's peace crept into her heart, and there was a great calm.

The winter crept on steadily. Jack Frost threw photographs of fairyland upon the windows, and hung the roofs with fringes of crystal pendants, while the snowflakes piled themselves over the fences and made a shroud for the trees, and every day Pauline, with this strange peace in her heart, did her housework to the glory of G.o.d.

There were bright spots here and there, for the Boston letters came freely, and the magazines which she had liked best, and now and then a book, as Belle said, 'to keep Mr Hallam company.' They would not let her drop out of their life, these kind friends, and she took it all thankfully, though she could only glance at the magazines, and never opened the books. There would be time by-and-by, she said to herself cheerfully. There was so much waiting for her in the beautiful by-and-by.

'It beats me,' said Mrs Harding fretfully, as Pauline hushed Polly to sleep, 'what you do to that child. I used to sing to her till my throat cracked, but you just smooth her hair awhile with those fingers of yours, and off she goes. I wish you'd come and smooth me off to sleep.

I'm that tired lying here, I don't know what to do. That new doctor's no more good than his powders are. I don't see what old Dr Ross had to die for, just before I was goin' ter need him.' And the sick woman groaned.

Pauline laid Polly in her cot with a smile. This grudging praise was very sweet to her. To make darkness light, that was Christ's mission, and hers. She was putting her whole soul in the effort.

'What makes P'liney so different?' queried Leander of Stephen and John, as they rested from their daily task of cutting wood. 'She used ter be as mad as hops if yer mussed up yer clothes, an' now she only laughs an'

sez, "Never mind, if it's a stain that soap will conquer."'

'An' she's always singin' too,' said John thoughtfully; 'if mother didn't scold so it would be real pleasant.'

'I'd like to know why it is, though,' repeated Leander thoughtfully.

'Because she belongs to the King,' said the clear, sweet voice of his step-sister from the doorway, 'and she wants you all to belong to Him too.'

When she went back into the house, she found Lemuel brandishing a broomstick over the frightened Polly.

'Why, Lemuel, what are you doing?'

'I've casted the devils out of her,' exclaimed that youth triumphantly, 'an' they've gone inter the pig pen, whole leguns of 'em, an' they're kickin' orful!'

_Chapter IX_

A LOST LETTER

Seven years had gone by, and every day of each successive month had been full to overflowing of hard work for Pauline.

'Dear Tryphosa,' she whispered to herself with a smile, 'you little thought, when you gave me that new beat.i.tude, what constant friends the grey angel of Drudgery and I were to be.'

She climbed slowly up the narrow stairs to her room, and shaded the lamp that it might not disturb Polly's troubled sleep,--poor Polly, who would be an invalid for life. Then she sat down with a sigh of relief to read Belle's last letter. It had been a hard day, her step-mother had been more than usually restless, and the farm-work had been very heavy, for Martha Spriggs was home on a visit; every nerve in her body seemed to quiver with the strain.

'My dearest Paul,' Belle wrote, 'I can hardly see for crying, but I promised her that you should know at once.