Men, Women, and Ghosts Part 34

Somebody stumbled over her. It was Cousin Sue--Halcombe Dike's Cousin Sue.

"Deary me!" she said; and being five feet seven, with strong Yankee arms of her own, she took Sharley up in them, and carried her to the house as if she had been a baby.

Sharley did not commit the atrocity of fainting, but found herself thoroughly chilled and weak. Cousin Sue bustled about with brandy and blankets, and Sharley, watching her through her half-closed eyes, speculated a little. Had _she_ anybody's wedding-cards laid up on a shelf? She had the little black ap.r.o.n at any rate. Poor Cousin Sue!

Should she be like that? "Poor Cousin Charlotte!" people would say.

Cousin Sue had gone to see about supper when Sharley opened her eyes and sat strongly up. A gentle-faced woman sat between her and the light, in a chair cushioned upon one side for a useless arm. Halcombe had made that chair. Mrs. Dike had been a busy, cheery woman, and Sharley had always felt sorry for her since the sudden day when paralysis crippled her good right hand; three years ago that was now; but she was not one of those people to whom it comes natural to say that one is sorry for them, and she was Halcombe's mother, and so Sharley had never said it.

It struck her freshly now that this woman had seen much ill-fortune in her widowed years, and that she had kept a certain brave, contented look in her eyes through it all.

It struck her only as a pa.s.sing thought, which might never have come back had not Mrs. Dike pushed her chair up beside her, and given her a long, quiet look straight in the eyes.

"It was late for you to be out in the storm, my dear, and alone."

"I'd been out a good while. I had been on--the track," said Sharley, with a slight shiver. "I think I could not have been exactly well. I would not go again. I must go home now. But oh"--her voice sinking--"I wish n.o.body had found me, I wish n.o.body had found me! The snow would have covered me up, you see."

She started up flushing hot and frightened. What had she been saying to Halcombe's mother?

But Halcombe's mother put her healthy soft hand down on the girl's shut fingers. Women understand each other in flashes.

"My dear," she said, without prelude or apology, "I have a thing to say to you. G.o.d does not give us our troubles to think about; that's all. I have lived more years than you. I know that He never gives us our troubles to think about."

"I don't know who's going to think about them if we don't!" said Sharley, half aggrieved.

"Supposing n.o.body thinks of them, where's the harm done? Mark my words, child: He sends them to drive us out of ourselves,--to _drive_ us out.

He had much rather we would go of our own accord, but if we won't go we must be sent, for go we must. That's just about what we're put into this world for, and we're not fit to go out of it till we have found this out."

Now the moralities of conversation were apt to glide off from Sharley like rain-drops from gutta-percha, and I cannot a.s.sert that these words would have made profound impression upon her had not Halcombe Dike's mother happened to say them.

Be that as it may, she certainly took them home with her, and pondered them in her heart; pondered till late in her feverish, sleepless night, till her pillow grew wet, and her heart grew still. About midnight she jumped out into the cold, and kneeled, with her face hidden in the bed.

"O, I've been a naughty girl!" she said, just as she might have said it ten years ago. She felt so small, and ignorant, and weak that night.

Out of such smallness, and ignorance, and weakness great knowledge and strength may have beautiful growth. They came in time to Sharley, but it was a long, slow time. Moppet was just as unendurable, the baby just as fretful, life just as joyless, as if she had taken no new outlook upon it, made no new, tearful plans about it.

"Calico! calico!" she cried out a dozen times a day; "nothing _but_ calico!"

But by and by it dawned in her thoughts that this was a very little matter to cry out about. What if G.o.d meant that some lives should be "all just alike," and like nothing fresh or bonnie, and that hers should be one? That was his affair. Hers was to use the dull gray gift he gave--_whatever_ gift he gave--as loyally and as cheerily as she would use treasures of gold and rose-tint. He knew what he was doing. What he did was never forgetful or unkind. She felt--after a long time, and in a quiet way--that she could be sure of that.

No matter about Halcombe Dike, and what was gone. No matter about the little black ap.r.o.ns, and what was coming. He understood all about that.

He would take care of it.

Meantime, why could she not as well wash Moppet's face with a pleasant word as with a cross one? darn the stockings with a smile as well as a frown? stay and hear her mother discuss her headaches as well as run away and think of herself? Why not give happiness since she could not have it? be of use since n.o.body was of much use to her? Easier saying than doing, to be sure, Sharley found; but she kept the idea in mind as the winter wore away.

She was thinking about it one April afternoon, when she had stolen out of the house for a walk in the budding woods. She had need enough of a walk. It was four weeks now since she had felt the wide wind upon her face; four weeks pleasantly occupied in engineering four boys through the measles; and if ever a sick child had the capacity for making of himself a seraph upon earth it was Moppet. It was a thin little face which stood out against the "green mist" of the unfurling leaves as Sharley wandered in and out with sweet aimlessness among the elms and hickories; very thin, with its wistful eyes grown hollow; a shadow of the old Sharley who fluttered among the plaid ribbons one October morning. It was a saddened face--it might always be a saddened face--but a certain pleasant, rested look had worked its way about her mouth, not unlike the rich mellowness of a rainy sunset. Not that Sharley knew much about sunsets yet; but she thought she did, which, as I said before, amounts to about the same thing.

She was thinking with a wee glow of pleasure how the baby's arms clung around her neck that morning, and how surprised her mother looked when Methuselah cried at her taking this walk. As you were warned in the beginning, nothing remarkable ever happened to Sharley. Since she had begun in practice to approve Mrs. Dike's theory, that no harm is done if we never think of our troubles, she had neither become the village idol, nor in any remarkable degree her mother's pride. But she had nevertheless cut for herself a small niche in the heart of her home,--a much larger niche, perhaps, than the excellent Mrs. Guest was well aware of.

"I don't care how small it is," cried Sharley, "as long as I have room to put my two feet on and look up."

And for that old pain? Ah, well, G.o.d knew about that, and Sharley,--n.o.body else. Whatever the winter had taught her she had bound and labelled in her precise little way for future use. At least she had learned--and it is not everybody who learns it at eighteen,--to wear her life bravely--"a rose with a golden thorn."

I really think that this is the place to end my story, so properly polished off with a moral. So many Sharleys, too, will never read beyond. But being bound in honor to tell the whole moral or no moral, I must add, that while Sharley walked and thought among her hickories there came up a thunder-storm. It fell upon her without any warning. The sky had been clear when she looked at it last. It gaped at her now out of the throats of purple-black clouds. Thunders crashed over and about her. All the forest darkened and reeled. Sharley was enough like other girls to be afraid of a thunder-storm. She started with a cry to break her way through the matted undergrowth; saw, or felt that she saw, the glare of a golden arrow overhead; threw out her hands, and fell crushed, face downward, at the foot of a scorched tree.

When she opened her eyes she was sitting under a wood-pile. Or, to speak more accurately, she was sitting in Mr. Halcombe Dike's lap, and Mr. Halcombe Dike was under the wood-pile.

It was a low, triangular wood-pile, roofed with pine boards, through which the water was dripping. It stood in the centre of a large clearing, exposed to the rain, but safe.

"Oh!" said Sharley.

"That's right," said he, "I knew you were only stunned. I've been rubbing your hands and feet. It was better to come here than to run the blockade of that patch of woods to a house. Don't try to talk."

"I'm not," said Sharley, with a faint little laugh, "it's you that are talking"; and ended with a weak pause, her head falling back where she had found it, upon his arm.

"I _wouldn't_ talk," repeated the young man, relevantly, after a profound silence of five minutes. "I was coming 'across lots' from the station. You fell--Sharley, you fell right at my feet!"

He spoke carelessly, but Sharley, looking up, saw that his face was white.

"I believe I will get down," she observed, after some consideration, lifting her head.

"I don't see how you can, you know," he suggested, helplessly; "it pours as straight as a deluge out there. There isn't room in this place for two people to sit."

So they "accepted the situation."

The clouds broke presently, and rifts of yellow light darted in through the fragrant, wet pine boards. Sharley's hair had fallen from her net and covered her face. She felt too weak to push it away. After some thought Halcombe Dike pushed it away for her, reverently, with his strong, warm hand. The little white, trembling face shone out. He turned and looked at it--the poor little face!--looked at it gravely and long.

But Sharley, at the look, sat up straight. Her heart leaped out into the yellow light. All her dreary winter danced and dwindled away. Through the cracks in the pine boards a long procession of May-days came filing in. The scattering rain-drops flamed before her. "All the world and all the waters blushed and bloomed." She was so very young!

"I could not speak," he told her quietly, "when I was at home before. I could never speak till now. Last October I thought"--his voice sinking hoa.r.s.ely--"I thought, Sharley, it could never be. I could barely eke out my daily bread; I had no right to ask you--to bind you. You were very young; I thought, perhaps, Sharley, you might forget. Somebody else might make you happier. I would not stand in the way of your happiness.

I asked G.o.d to bless you that morning when I went away in the cars, Sharley. Sharley!"

Something in her face he could not understand. All that was meant by the upturned face perhaps he will never understand. She hid it in her bright, brown hair; put her hand up softly upon his cheek and cried.

"If you would like to hear anything about the business part of it--"

suggested the young man, clearing his throat. But Sharley "hated business." She would not hear.

"Not about the Crumpet Buildings? Well, I carried that affair through,--that's all."

They came out under the wide sky, and walked home hand in hand. All the world was hung with crystals. The faint shadow of a rainbow quivered across a silver cloud.

The first thing that Sharley did when she came home was to find Moppet and squeeze him.

"O Moppet, we can be good girls all the same if we are happy, can't we?"

"No, sir!" said injured Moppet. "You don't catch me!"

"But O Moppet, see the round drops hanging and burning on the blinds!

And how the little mud-puddles shine, Moppet!"