Ester Ried Yet Speaking Part 32

"We'll do as you say." He spoke with the air of a man who had a.s.sumed his proper place and taken up his duties. "Mart, you go along with her, and I'll see about things to-morrow."

And Mart, for the first time in her life, received and obeyed in silence a direction from her brother.

Possibly Mrs. Roberts may have been mistaken, but she thought that much had been accomplished that day.

Yet none of them realized whereunto this thing would grow.

Mrs. Roberts, when she ushered Mart that evening into the pink room again, and showed her how to manage the hot and cold water, and which bell to ring if she needed anything, and in every imaginable way treated her as a guest, whom it was pleasant to serve, had really no plans just then--no hobby to ride--but simply acted out the dictates of her heart. You will remember that her Christian life had been always unconventional. The very fact that during her early girlhood she had been painfully trammelled by what "they" would say or think, seemed to have had its influence over her later experiences. Since she had been made free, she would be free, indeed; that is, with the liberty with which Christ makes us free. What would please _Him_ she resolved should be the one thought to which she would give careful attention. Now, it is perhaps worthy of mention, that this closely following disciple did not once stop to determine whether it would please Him to give such tender care to this stray child of His, or whether she would be considered doing not just the thing, in _His_ eyes, if she entertained her in the pink room.

About what He could have her do next, she gave much thought. And it was not for days, or rather weeks, that she caught the possibility of His meaning that the pink room should really be the girl's own.

It was just this way. The weeks went by, and no plan for settling Mart comfortably elsewhere met Mrs. Roberts' approval. There was constantly some excellent reason why the one mentioned would not do.

Meantime they became, she and Gracie Dennis, more and more deeply interested in Mart. In her wardrobe first. "Wherever she lives she should have respectable clothing; thus much is easily settled." So the matron decreed, and Gracie did not gainsay it. She became absorbed in preparing it. Such fascinating work! So many things were needed, and her skin was so delicate, and her eyes so blue, and Gracie's choice of shades and textures fitted her so precisely. Then, when dressed, simple though her toilet was, her remarkable beauty shone out so conspicuously as to alarm Mrs. Roberts whenever she thought of her in shop or store.

Several times during the weeks, she visited Sallie Calkins, and looked about her with a thoughtful air, and came away feeling that it would not do. There was Mark, growing into manhood, a good boy, hard-working, respectable, proud of his good, homely sister, and of his reformed father. The two rooms were taking on every sort of homely comfort that Sallie's skill, helped by Mrs. Roberts' suggestions, could devise. It was growing into a model little home in its way, but there was not a corner in it where Mart would fit.

Then, as the days pa.s.sed, a subtle, fascinating change began to come over Mart. She slipped quietly into certain household duties. She showed marvellous skill with her needle; such skill, indeed, that Gracie Dennis said more than once: "I'll tell you, Flossy, what to do with her: put her in a good establishment, and let her learn the dressmaking trade.

She could make her fortune in time." And Mrs. Roberts smiled, and a.s.sented to the statement, but not to the proposition. There was no dressmaking establishment known to her where she was willing to place so young and pretty and ignorant a girl. But she was quite willing that Mart should learn the looping of dresses, and the fitting of sacks and collars and ruffles; and take many a st.i.tch for her, as well as for Gracie. She was willing to have her do a dozen little nameless things, the ways of doing which she had caught up; until at last the touch of her fingers began to be felt about the rooms, and Mrs. Roberts began to notice that she should miss Mart when she went away. Still, from the first time she said this, the thought came afterward with a smile of satisfaction, and it was but a week afterward that she caught herself phrasing it, that she should miss her _if_ she went away.

What about Dirk? Young Ried could have told you more of him during these days than anybody else. He still stayed at the boarding-house. Mrs.

Saunders, the mistress of it, was one whom, if you had known her, you would feel sure could interest herself heartily in such as he. There was a bit of a room next to Ried's. To be sure, it had been used for a clothes-press, and it took the busy housekeeper half a day to plan how she could get along without it; but she planned, and offered it to Ried for his _protege_.

"Just for the present, you know, until he sees what he can do, poor fellow," she said, and Ried accepted the little room joyfully, and helped fit it up.

CHAPTER XXIX

"WHAT IF I BELONGED?"

You think things are taking very rapid strides? Well, don't you know that there come periods when they do just that thing, or appear to? Why, even the buds on the trees teach us the lesson. How many springtimes have you gone to your bed feeling that the season was late, and the trees were bare, and the fruits would all be backward, and Nature was dawdling along in a very wearisome fashion; and awakened in the morning to find that there had in the night been a gentle rain, and a movement of mysterious power among the buds and the gra.s.ses, and that now, in the morning sunshine, the world had burst into bloom? Yet, did you really suppose, after all, that the _work_ was done in one night?

There was progress of several sorts in the cla.s.s at the South End. Even a casual observer could have seen a change in the boys that first Sunday after they had attended Dirk's mother to the grave. The dignity of that hour of sorrow was still upon them. Even the very reckless and world-hardened will offer a certain degree of respect to death. On ordinary occasions, the boys might have been merry at Dirk's expense, for they saw changes in him; but the memory of his mother's coffin kept them silent, and let his changed manner have its effect.

That Sunday was full of small events to Dirk; at least they are small enough when one puts them on paper, though I admit that they looked large to him. Several people interested themselves in his welfare.

"Poor fellow!" said Mrs. Saunders, "I suppose his mother tried to do for him. Just as likely as not she had a clean shirt for him of a Sunday morning."'

You will perceive that Mrs. Saunders, though all her life a resident of a large city, was not very well-acquainted with the abject poor. In point of fact, Dirk Colson had had no extra clothing for his mother to make clean. But Mrs. Saunders, full of the motherly thought, yet finding no trace of a shirt in the bundle of rags that Dirk had brought with him, went down one day into the depths of an old trunk, and brought to light and mended and washed and ironed a shirt that had long been laid aside.

It lay in its purity on a chair at the foot of Dirk's bed on Sabbath morning. He lay still and looked at it for a while, then arose and gave such careful attention to the soap and water as was new to him, and arrayed himself in the clean linen.

His clothes were whole and clean. Mr. Roberts had seen to it that he went respectably dressed to his mother's funeral.

A tap at his door a little later, and young Ried appeared, shoe-brush and blacking-box in hand.

"Want to borrow?" he said, in the careless tone of one who might have supposed that the blacking of his boots was an every-day matter to this boy. "I always keep my own; it is cheaper than to depend on the street boys."

Dirk said nothing at all, but reached forth his hand, and took the offered tools, and the hint which came with them. When he went down to breakfast his boots shone, and his fresh paper collar was neatly arranged; altogether he was not the boy to whom I first introduced you.

I am not sure that Policeman Duffer would have recognized him. A collar and a necktie make a great difference in some people's personal appearance. Dirk wondered a little as to where the box of paper collars came from. The necktie he had just found lying in the bottom of the box.

It was the mate of the one young Ried wore, but that told nothing, for both were simple and plain, and could be bought by the dozens in any furnishing store.

It is small wonder that the boys in the cla.s.s looked at him. Nimble d.i.c.k wore at first a roguish air, but a sudden memory of Dirk's face when he turned away from his mother's grave came in time. Open graves are not easy things to forget.

Dirk went to the church that day; went with young Ried by invitation, and sat in the pew behind Mr. Roberts.

By the way, the seat which he occupied was another of Mr. Roberts'

peculiarities. Three seats were rented by him in a central part of the large church. One of these seats he and his wife regularly occupied. The others were almost as regularly occupied by the clerks from the store who chose to make that their church home. Six sittings to a pew. When a young man chose, Mr. Roberts was ready to enter into a business engagement with him, whereby the sitting should be considered his own; Mr. Roberts considering it to be no part of any one's concern that the sum for which he thus sub-let the sittings was not a tenth of what the first rental cost. It was in this way that Mr. Ried owned sittings in the pew just back of that occupied by Mr. Roberts; and brought with him constantly one and another young man. Today the young man was Dirk Colson.

It was all a strange world to him. He had wandered into the gallery of the Mission Chapel, and looked down from his perch on the crowd of worshippers; but this morning he was in the very centre of things, as if he were one of them. Perhaps it is not strange that the startled inquiry came to his heart: What if I belonged? Where did he belong now? He had lost his place; he must make another. What if it should be in this neighborhood, among these surroundings? Such thoughts did not take actual shape to him, so that he could have put them into words; they merely hovered in his atmosphere. Mrs. Roberts sat so that he could look at her, which thing he liked to do. It had long since been settled in his mind that he had one friend, and that one was Mrs. Roberts. He admired Gracie Dennis, too, with a different sort of admiration from that which he gave to the matron. She might be all very well; and she was a splendid reader; and he knew that he could imitate her on certain sentences, at least. And she had taught him to use the type-writer--an accomplishment which he meant to perfect himself in as soon as he had a chance. In fact, his ambition reached higher than that: one of these days he meant to make one of his own with certain improvements! Who shall say that Dirk was not growing?

On this particular day there sat beside Mrs. Roberts a lady,--a stranger. He could not see her face, but for some reason, which he did not understand, Dirk liked to look at her. She suggested something to him that seemed like a familiar dream. He thought much about her, and resolved to see if in her face she looked like any one he ever saw. As she turned at the close of the service he was looking at her steadily.

Lo! it was Mart.

Now the possibility had not once suggested itself to his mind. If you think this doubtful, you merely show that you know nothing about the transforming effect of a becoming dress, no matter how simple it may be. Remember, Dirk had never but twice seen his sister in a bonnet.

The first time it was Sallie's, and though the effect was sufficiently startling, yet Sallie's bonnet did not fit her face, as this creation of Gracie Dennis' fingers did. The second time the bonnet had been a hideous black one, proffered by an old woman who lived in the story above them, and whose thoughtfulness Mrs. Roberts would not mar by making any mention of the neat one which she had brought in a box that day. The black bonnet had been like a mask, hiding Mart's beauty.

The bonnet that she wore now was not of that character. It told a wonderful story to Dirk's astonished gaze. Now, indeed, the likeness was plain; without doubt, the girl whose face lighted with a curious smile at sight of him, bore a striking likeness to the woman who had smiled at him whenever she met him!

A curious effect this had on Dirk. There was that in his sister which made it possible for her to be something like the woman who had won his heart; and that sister was in his care: she had said so; he must work for her, and watch over her!

I suppose that Sabbath was really the beginning of the surface changes in Mrs. Roberts' cla.s.s. Not the beginning to the teacher, but to those people who only have eyes for strongly marked things.

I know that it was but a few weeks afterward that Mrs. Roberts came home with such an unusual light in her eyes, and with her face so full of brightness, that her husband said, inquiringly:--

"What is it, Flossy?"

She turned to him, eagerly, ready to laugh.

"It is what you will understand, but a great many people wouldn't. It is so nice that you understand things! I feel just like saying, 'Thank the Lord.'"

"Do you mean to convey the idea that only a very few favored people feel like that? I don't know of a person who has not great occasion. What is your special one?"

"Evan, the last boy had his boots blacked, and a fresh paper collar on!"

Mr. Roberts threw back his head and laughed,--a genial, hearty laugh.

His wife looked on, smiling. There is a great deal of character in a laugh, remember; you would have known that this was a sympathetic one.

Mr. Roberts was entirely capable of realizing what this said to his wife about the future of her boys. It was becoming certain that their self-respect was awakened.

A few days thereafter occurred another of those little things which mark some characters.

Dirk, at Mrs. Saunders' breakfast-table on Sabbath morning, heard talk that on Monday he recalled. By the way, I should have told you of one other way in which the Sabbath became a marked day to him. He slept in the little room which opened from Ried's, but his meals were picked up at a restaurant, as occasion offered,--a much nicer and surer method of living than he had ever known before. Even the commonest restaurant had great respectability to him. Yet you will remember that he had by this time taken several suppers in Mrs. Roberts' dining-room. He knew that there was a difference in things; in fact, his experience now stretched over infinite differences; but the first time he sat down to Mrs.

Saunders' breakfast-table, on a Sabbath morning, he discovered another grade: this by no means belonged to the restaurant cla.s.s? The Sunday breakfasts and dinners were some of Mrs. Saunders' quiet ways of helping along the work of the Christian world. Many a young man appeared at her table as the guest of Ried or of Dr. Everett, or of some other of the boarders, who was unaware that he owed the pleasant experience to the landlady.