What Can She Do? Part 12

And this was true. Had not Edith possessed a practical resolute nature, that preferred any kind of action to apathetic inaction and futile grieving, she would have been as helpless as the rest.

Do you say then that it was a mere matter of chance that Edith should be superior to the others, and that she deserved no credit, and they no blame? Why should such all-important conditions of character be the mere result of chance and circ.u.mstance? Would not Christian education and principle have vastly improved the Edith that existed? Would they not have made the others helpful, self-forgetting, and sympathetic?

Why should the world be full of people so deformed, or morally feeble, or so ignorant, as to be helpless? Why should the naturally strong work with only contempt and condemnation for the weak? While many say, "Stand aside, I am holier than thou," perhaps more say, "Stand aside, I am wiser--stronger than thou," and the weak are made more hopelessly discouraged. This helplessness on one hand, and arrogant fault-finding strength on the other, are not the result of chance, but of an imperfect education. They come from the neglect and wrong-doing of those whose province it was to train and educate.

If we find among a family of children reaching maturity one helpless from deformity, and another from feebleness, and are told that the parents, by employing surgical skill, might have removed the deformity, and overcome the weakness by tonic treatment, but had neglected to do so, we should not have much to say about chance. I know of a poor man who spent nearly all that he had in the world to have his boy's leg straightened, and he was called a "good father."

What are these physical defects compared with the graver defects of character?

Even though Mr. Allen is dead, we cannot say that he was a good father, though he spent so many thousands on his daughters. We certainly cannot call Mrs. Allen a good mother, and the proof of this is that Laura is feeble and selfish, Zell deformed through lack of self-control, and Edith hard and pitiless in her comparative strength.

They were unable to cope with the practical questions of their situation. They had been launched upon the perilous, uncertain voyage of life without the compa.s.s of a true faith or the charts of principle to guide them, and they had been provided with no life-boats of knowledge to save them in case of disaster. They are now tossing among the breakers of misfortune, almost utterly the sport of the winds and waves of circ.u.mstances. If these girls never reached the sh.o.r.e of happiness and safety, could we wonder?

How would your daughter fare, my reader, if you were gone and she were poor, with her hands and brain to depend on for bread, and her heart culture for happiness? In spite of all your providence and foresight, such may be her situation. Such becomes the condition of many men's daughters every day.

But time and events swept the Allens forward, as the shipwrecked are borne on the crest of a wave, and we must follow their fortunes.

Hungry creditors, especially the petty ones uptown, stripped them of everything they could lay their hands on, and they were soon compelled to leave their Fifth Avenue mansion. The little place in the country, given to Edith partly in jest by her father as a birthday present, was now their only refuge, and to this they prepared to go on the first of April. Edith, as usual, took the lead, and was to go in advance of the others with such furniture as they had been able to keep, and prepare for their coming. Old Hannibal, who had grown gray in the service of the family, and now declined to leave it, was to accompany her. On a dark, lowering day, symbolic of their fortunes, some loaded drays took down to the boat that with which they would commence the meagre housekeeping of their poverty. Edith went slowly down the broad steps leading from her elegant home, and before she entered the carriage turned for one lingering, tearful look, such as Eve may have bent upon the gate of Paradise closing behind her, then sprang into the carriage, drew the curtains, and sobbed all the way to the boat.

Scarcely once before, during that long, hard month, had she so given way to her feelings. But she was alone now and none could see her tears and call her weak. Hannibal took his seat on the box with the driver, and looked and felt very much as he did when following his master to Greenwood.

CHAPTER VIII

WARPED

It is the early breakfast hour at a small frame house, situated about a mile from the staid but thriving village of Pushton. But the indications around the house do not denote thrift. Quite the reverse.

As the neighbors expressed it, "there was a screw loose with Lacey,"

the owner of this place. It was going down hill like its master. A general air of neglect and growing dilapidation impressed the most casual observer. The front gate hung on one hinge; boards were off the shackly barn, and the house had grown dingy and weather-stained from lack of paint. But as you entered and pa.s.sed from the province of the master to that of the mistress a new element was apparent, struggling with, but unable to overcome, the predominant tendency to unthrift and seediness. But everything that Mrs. Lacey controlled was as neat as the poor overworked woman could keep it.

At the time our story becomes interested in her fortunes, Mrs. Lacey was a middle-aged woman, but appeared older than her years warranted, from the long-continued strain of incessant toil, and from that which wears much faster still, the depression of an unhappy, ill-mated life.

Her face wore the pathetic expression of confirmed discouragement. She reminded one of soldiers fighting when they know that it is of no use, and that defeat will be the only result, but who fight on mechanically, in obedience to orders.

She is now placing a very plain but wholesome and well-prepared breakfast on the table, and it would seem that both the eating and cooking were carried on in the same large living-room. Her daughter, a rosy-cheeked, half-grown girl of fourteen, was a.s.sisting her, and both mother and daughter seemed in a nervous state of expectancy, as if hoping and fearing the result of a near event. A moment's glance showed that this event related to a lad of about seventeen, who was walking about the room, vainly trying to control the agitation which is natural even to the cool and experienced when feeling that they are at one of the crises of life.

It could not be expected of Arden Lacey at his age to be cool and experienced. Indeed his light curling hair, blue eyes, and a mobile sensitive mouth, suggested the reverse of a stolid self-poise, or cheerful endurance. Any one accustomed to observe character could see that he was possessed of a nervous, fine-fibred nature capable of n.o.ble achievement under right influences, but also easily warped and susceptible to sad injury under brutal wrong. He was like those delicate and somewhat complicated musical instruments that produce the sweetest harmonies when in tune and well played upon, but the most jangling discords when unstrung and in rough, ignorant hands. He had inherited his nervous temperament, his tendency to irritation and excess, from the diseased, over-stimulated system of his father, who was fast becoming a confirmed inebriate, and who had been poisoning himself with bad liquors all his life. From his mother he had obtained what balance he had in temperament, but he owed more to her daily influence and training. It was the one struggle of the poor woman's life to shield her children from the evil consequences of their father's life. For her son she had special anxiety, knowing his sensitive, high-strung nature, and his tendency to go headlong into evil if his self-respect and self-control were once lost. His pa.s.sionate love for her had been the boy's best trait, and through this she had controlled him thus far. But she had thought that it might be best for him to be away from his father's presence and influence if she could only find something that accorded with his bent. And this eventually proved to be a college education. The boy was of a quick and studious mind. From earliest years he had been fond of books, and as time advanced, the pa.s.sion for study and reading grew upon him. He had a strong imagination, and his favorite styles of reading were such as appealed to this. In the scenes of history and romance he escaped from the sordid life of toil and shame to which his father condemned him, into a large realm that seemed rich and glorified in contrast. When he was but fourteen the thought of a liberal education fired his ambition and became the dream of his life.

He made the very most of the district school to which he was sent in winter. The teacher happened to be a well-educated man, and took pride in his apt, eager scholar. Between the boy's and the mother's savings they had obtained enough to secure private lessons in Latin and Greek, and now at the age of seventeen he was tolerably well prepared for college.

But the father had no sympathy at all with these tastes, and from the incessant labor he required of his son, and the constant interruptions he occasioned in his studies even in winter, he had been a perpetual bar to all progress.

On the day previous to the scene described in the opening of this chapter, the winter term had closed, and Mr. Rule, the teacher, had declared that Arden could enter college, and with natural pride in his own work as instructor, intimated that he would lead his cla.s.s if he did.

Both mother and son were so elated at this that they determined at once to state the fact to the father, thinking that if he had any of the natural feelings of a parent he would take some pride in his boy, and be willing to help him obtain the education he longed for.

But there is little to be hoped from a man who is completely under the influence of ignorance and rum. Mr. Lacey was the son of a small farmer like himself, and never had anything to recommend him but his fine looks, which had captivated poor Mrs. Lacey to her cost. Unlike the majority of his cla.s.s, who are fast becoming a very intelligent part of the community, and are glad to educate their children, he boasted that he liked the "old ways," and by these he meant the worst ways of his father's day, when books and schools were scarce, and few newspapers found their way to rural homes. He was, like his father before him, a graduate of the village tavern, and had imbibed bad liquor and his ideas of life at the same time from that objectionable source. With the narrow-mindedness of his cla.s.s, he had a prejudice against all learning that went beyond the three R's, and had watched with growing disapprobation his son's taste for books, believing that it would spoil him as a farm hand, and make him an idle dreamer. He was less and less inclined to work himself as his frame became diseased and enfeebled from intemperance, and he determined now to get as much work as possible out of that "great hulk of a boy," as he called Arden. He had picked up some hints of the college hopes, and the very thought angered him. He determined that when the boy broached the subject he would give him such a "jawing" (to use his own vernacular) "as would put an end to that nonsense." Therefore both Arden and his mother, who were waiting as we have described in such a perturbed anxious state for his entrance, were doomed to bitter disappointment. At last a heavy red-faced man entered the kitchen, stalking in on the white floor out of the drizzling rain with his muddy boots leaving tracks and blotches in keeping with his character.

But he had the grace to wash his grimy hands before sitting down to the table. He was always in a bad humor in the morning, and the chilly rain had not improved it. A glance around showed him that something was on hand, and he surmised that it was the college business. He at once thought within himself:

"I'll squelch the thing now, once for all."

Turning to his son, he said, "Look here, youngster, why hain't you been out doing your ch.o.r.es? D'ye expect me to do your work and mine, too?"

"Father," said the impulsive boy with a voice of trembling eagerness, "if you will let me go to college next fall, I'll do my work and yours too. I'll work night and day--"

"What cussed nonsense is this?" demanded the man harshly, clashing down his knife and fork and turning frowningly toward his son.

"No, but father, listen to me before you refuse. Mr. Rule says I'm fit to enter college and that I can lead my cla.s.s too. I've been studying for this three years. I've set my heart upon it," and in his earnestness, tears gathered in his eyes.

"The more fool you, and old Rule is another," was the coa.r.s.e answer.

The boy's eyes flashed angrily, but the mother here spoke.

"You ought to be proud of your son, John; if you were a true father you would be. If you'd encourage and help him now, he'd make a man that--"

"Shut up! little you know about it. He'd make one of your snivelling white-fingered loafers that's too proud to get a living by hard work.

Perhaps you'd like to make a parson out of him. Now look here, old woman, and you, too, my young c.o.c.k, I've suspicioned that something of this kind was up, but I tell you once for all it won't go. Just as this hulk of a boy is gettin' of some use to me, you want to spoil him by sending him to college. I'll see him hanged first," and the man turned to his breakfast as if he had settled it. But he was startled by his son's exclaiming pa.s.sionately:

"I will go."

"Look here, what do _you_ mean?" said the father, rising with a black ugly look.

"I mean I've set my heart on going to college and I will go. You and all the world shan't hinder me. I won't stay here and be a farm drudge all my life."

The man's face was livid with anger, and in a low, hissing tone he said:

"I guess you want taking down a peg, my college gentleman. Perhaps you don't know I'm master till you're twenty-one," and he reached down a large leather strap.

"You strike me if you dare," shouted the boy.

"If I dare! haw! haw! If I don't cut the cussed nonsense out of yer this morning, then I never did," and he took an angry stride toward his son, who sprang behind the stove.

The wife and mother had stood by growing whiter and whiter, and with lips pressed closely together. At this critical moment she stepped before her infuriated husband and seized his arm, exclaiming:

"John, take care. You have reached the end."

"Stand aside," snarled the man, raising the strap, "or I'll give you a taste of it, too."

The woman's grasp tightened on his arm, and in a voice that made him pause and look fixedly at her, she said:

"If you strike me or that boy I'll take my children and we will leave your roof this hateful day never to return."

"Hain't I to be master in my own house?" said the husband sullenly.

"You are not to be a brute in your own house. I know you've struck me before, but I endured it and said nothing about it because you were drunk, but you are not drunk now, and if you lay a finger on me or my son to-day, I will never darken your doors again."

The unnatural father saw that he had gone too far. He had not expected such an issue. He had long been accustomed to follow the lead of his brutal pa.s.sions, but had now reached a point where he felt he must stop, as his wife said. Turning on his heel, he sullenly took his place at the table, muttering:

"It's a pretty pa.s.s when there's mutiny in a man's own house." Then to his son, "You won't get a d--n cent out of me for your college business, mind that."

Rose, the daughter, who had been crying and wringing her hands on the door-step, now came timidly in, and at a sign from her mother she and her brother went into another room.