Patchwork Part 23

To the man who listened memory drew aside the curtains of twenty years.

He beheld again the sweet-faced wife glorified with the blessed halo of motherhood. He thrilled at the remembrance of her intense rapture as she clasped her babe in moments of vivid ecstasy, or held it tenderly in her arms as she sang the slumber song. The man was lost in revery--the sweet voice of the mother had suddenly grown weak and drifted into silence--a silence which would have been intolerable save for the lisping of a child voice that was filled with the same indefinable sweetness the treasured, silenced voice had possessed. In those first days of bereavement Jacob Metz had clung to his motherless babe for comfort; her love and caresses had renewed his strength and touched him with a divine sense of his responsibility. His toil-hardened hands could not do the mother's tasks for her but his heart could love sufficiently to recompense, so far as that be possible, for the loss of the mother's presence. His own childhood had been stripped of all romance, hence he could not measure the value of the innocent pleasures of which Aunt Maria, in her stern and narrow discipline, deprived the little girl; but so far as he saw the light and so far as he was able, he quietly soothed where Aunt Maria irritated, and mitigated by his interest and sympathy the sternness of the woman's rule.

A fleeting retrospect of the past years crowded upon him as he heard Phbe sing the mother's song. The two voices seemed strangely merged and blended; when she ended and turned her face to him she seemed the vivid reincarnation of that other Phbe.

"That's a pretty song, isn't it, daddy? You like it?"

"Yes. Your mom used to sing you to sleep with it."

"I wish I could remember. I can't remember her at all," the girl said wistfully.

"I wish you could, too. You look just like her. I'm glad you do. We Metz people all have the black hair and dark eyes but you have your mom's light hair and blue eyes. I see her every time I look at you."

She seated herself near him. In a moment he spoke again, very deliberately, with his characteristic expressiveness:

"Phbe, I want you to know more about your mom. You know she was plain, a member of our Church. I would like you to dress like she did but I don't want you to dress that way and then be dissatisfied and go back to the dress of the world. Not many people do that, but those that do are the laughing-stock of the world. I don't want you coaxed to be plain and then not stay plain. I tell you this because I can see that you are just like your mom was, you like pretty things so much. She came in the Church with some girls she knew; none of her people were plain. I knew her right after she joined, and I took her to Love Feasts and to Meetings and we were soon promised to marry each other. I saw that something was troubling her and she told me that she wanted pretty clothes again and wanted to go to parties and picnics like some of the other girls she knew. But because she cared for me and was promised to me she kept on dressing plain. So we were married. The second year you came and then she was satisfied without pretty dresses. She said to me once, 'Jacob, I was foolish to fret about pretty clothes and jewelry, they could not bring happiness, but this'--she looked down at you--'this is the most precious, most beautiful jewel any woman could have.' I knew then that the love of vanity was gone from her, that she would never be tempted to go back to the dress and ways of the world."

For a moment there was silence in the big room. The memory of the days when the home circle was unbroken left the father quiet and thoughtful and strangely touched Phbe.

"I am glad you told me, daddy," she said presently. "To-day when Phares talked about the baptizing he seemed so confident and at peace in his religion, yet I could not promise to come into the Church and wear the plain dress. I am going to think about it----"

Here Aunt Maria called loudly, "Phbe, come out here once."

Phbe sighed, then turned from her father and entered the kitchen. The older woman was bending over an oblong frame and by the aid of a small steel hook was pulling tufts of cloth through the mesh of a piece of burlap, the foundation of a hooked rug.

"See once, Phbe, won't this be pretty till it's done?"

"Yes, very pretty. I like the Wall of Troy design you are using, and the blues and gray will be a good combination. What are you going to do with it?"

"It's for your chest."

The girl laughed. "Aunt Maria, you'll have to enlarge that chest or buy a second one. This spring when we cleaned house and had all the things of that chest hung out to air, I counted eleven quilts, six rugs, five table-cloths, ten gingham ap.r.o.ns, ever so many towels, besides all the old homespun linen I have in that other chest on the garret. I'll never need all that."

"Why, you don't know. If you marry----"

"But if I don't marry?"

"Ach, I guess old maids need covers and ap.r.o.ns and things as well as them that marry. But now I guess I'll stop for to-night. I want to sew the hooks 'n' eyes on my every-day dress yet before I go to bed."

"But before you go I want to ask you, to talk with you and daddy," said Phbe, determined to decide the matter of studying music in Philadelphia. The uncertainty of it was growing to be a strain upon her.

If there was no possibility of her dreams becoming realities she would put the thoughts away from her, but she wanted the question settled.

"Now what----" Aunt Maria raised her spectacles to her forehead and looked at the girl, at her flushed cheeks, her eyes darkened by excitement.

"So," the woman chuckled, "Phares picked up s.p.u.n.k once and asked you----"

"Phares has nothing to do with it," Phbe said curtly, her cheeks flushing deeper at the thought of the words she knew her aunt was ready to say. "This is my affair, and, of course, yours and daddy's." She turned to her father--"I want to study music."

"Music? How--you mean to learn to play the organ?" he asked.

"No. Oh, no! I mean to sing. Listen, please," she pleaded as she saw the bewildered look on his face. "You know I have always liked to sing. I have told you that many people have said my voice is good. So I'd like to go to Philadelphia and take lessons from a good teacher. May I? I can use the money I have in the bank, that my mother left me. I have about a thousand dollars. It won't take all of that for a few years' lessons.

Daddy, if you'll only say I may go!" Her voice wavered suspiciously at the end.

Jacob Metz looked at his daughter, then at the little low organ in the other room. Another Phbe had loved to sit at that instrument and sing--perhaps he was too easy with the girl--but if she wanted to go away and take lessons----

Before he could answer the plea Maria Metz found her voice and spoke authoritatively:

"Jacob Metz, goodness knows you're sometimes dumb enough to do foolish things, but you surely ain't goin' to leave Phbe go off to learn singing! Throwing away money like that! And what good is to come of it, I'd like to know. Who put that dumb notion in her head, it just now vonders me! If she must go away somewheres to school, like all the young ones think they must nowadays, why not leave her go to Millersville or to Elizabethtown or to Lancaster to learn dressmakin'? But to Philadelphy--why, that's a big city! Anyhow, I can't see the use of all this flyin' around to school. We didn't get it when we was young, and we growed up, too. We was lucky if we got to the country school regular, and we got through the world so far!"

"But Maria," her brother spoke gently, "you know things have changed since we went to school. The world don't stay the same."

"But to learn music!" she placed a scornful accent on the last word.

"What good will that do? And can't any one in Greenwald or Lancaster, even, learn her to sing? Anyhow, she don't need no lessons, she hollers too loud already. If she takes lessons yet what'll she do?"

"Oh, Aunt Maria," Phbe said impatiently, "you don't understand! If my voice is worth training it is worth having a good teacher. A city like Philadelphia is the place to go to."

"But where would you stay down there? Mebbe you couldn't get a place with nice people. Abody don't know what kinda people live in a city."

"I've thought of that. I wrote to Miss Lee last week and asked her and she wrote back and said it would be a splendid thing for me. She offered to help me find a boarding place. I could see her often and would not be alone among strangers. Best of all, Miss Lee has a cousin who plays the violin and who lives with her and her mother and he will help me find a good teacher. Isn't that lovely?"

"Omph," sniffed Aunt Maria. "It'll cost you a lot of money for board, mebbe as much as four dollars a week! And your lessons will be a lot, and your car fare back and forth. Then I guess you'd want a lot more dresses and things--ach, you just put that dumb notion from your head."

"Maria," Phbe's father spoke in significantly even tones, "you needn't talk like that. Phbe has the money her mom left her and I guess I could send her to school if I wanted to. It won't hurt her to go study music and see something of the world. It'll do her good to get away once like other girls."

"Do her good," echoed Aunt Maria. "Jacob Metz! You know little of the dangers of the big cities! But then, men ain't got no sense! I never met one yet that had enough to fill a thimble!"

"Aunt Maria," the girl said gently, "I'm not a child. I'm eighteen and I'll be near Miss Lee and her friends."

"And the fiddler," added the woman tartly.

"Ach," Phbe laughed. "Miss Lee will take care of me."

"Mebbe so," grumbled Aunt Maria.

"Now look here, Maria," Jacob spoke up, "Phbe can go this fall once and try it and she can come home often and if she don't like it she can come home right away. It takes only three hours to go to there. So, Phbe, you write to Miss Lee and tell her to expect you."

"Then I may go!" She threw her arms about her father's neck and kissed his bearded face. Demonstrations of affection were rare in the Metz household, but the father smiled as he stroked the girl's hair.

"You be a good girl, Phbe, that's all I want," he said.

"I will, daddy, I will!"

"Then, Maria, you take Phbe to Lancaster and get things ready so she can go in September. I'll let her take that thousand she has in the bank, but that must reach; it's enough for music lessons."

"I won't need all of it. What's left I'll save for next year."

"Next year! How many years must you go?" demanded Aunt Maria, still unhappy and sore.

"I don't know. But when the thousand is gone I'll earn more if I want to spend more."