Читать книгу The Greatest Romance Novels of Grace Livingston Hill - Grace Livingston Hill - Страница 16

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It was beautiful to wake the next morning with the birds singing a matin in the trees, and a wonderful Sabbath quiet over everything. Tired out as she was and worn with excitement and care, Shirley was the first to waken, and she lay there quiet beside Carol for a little while with her eyes closed, listening, and saying a prayer of thanksgiving for the peace of the place, and the wonder that it had come into her life. Then suddenly a strange luminousness about her simply forced her to open her eyes.

The eastern window was across the room from her bed, and the sky was rosy, with the dawn, and flooding the room. It was the first time in years she had watched the sun rise. She had almost forgotten, in the little dark city house, that there was a sun to rise and make things glorious. The sun had seemed an enemy to burn and wilt and stifle.

But now here was a friend, a radiant new friend, to be waited for and enjoyed, to give glory to all their lives. She raised herself on one elbow and watched until the red ball had risen and burst into the brightness of day. Then she lay down softly again and listened to the birds. They seemed to be mad with joy over the new day. Presently the chorus grew less and less. The birds had gone about their morning tasks, and only a single bright song now and then from some soloist in the big tree overhead marked the sweet-scented silence of the morning.

In the quiet Shirley lay and went over events since she had first seen this spot and taken the idea of living in the barn. Her heart gave thanks anew that her mother had not disliked it as she had feared. There was no sense that it was a stable, no odor of living creatures having occupied it before, only sweet dusty clover like a lingering of past things put away carefully. It was like a great camping expedition. And then all those flowers! The scent of the lilies was on the air. How lovely of the young girl out of her luxury to think to pass on some of the sweet things of life! And the gracious, chivalrous man, her brother! She must not let him think she would presume upon his kindness. She must not let even her thoughts cross the line and dwell on the ground of social equality. She knew where he belonged, and there he should stay for all her. She was heart-free and happy, and only too glad to have such a kind landlord.

She drifted off to sleep again, and it was late when she awoke the next time. A silvery bell from the little white church in the valley was ringing and echoing distantly. Sabbath, real Sabbath, seemed brooding happily in the very air. Shirley got up and dressed hastily. She felt as if she had already lost too much of this first wonderful day in the country.

A thrush was spilling his liquid notes in the tree overhead when she tiptoed softly into her mother's room. Doris opened her eyes and looked in wonder, then whispered softly:

"Vat is dat, Sirley? Vat is dat pitty sound?"

"A birdie in the tree, dearie!" whispered Shirley.

"A weel budie! I yantta see it! Take Doris up, Sirley!"

So Shirley lifted the little maiden, wrapped a shawl about her, and carried her softly to the window, where she looked up in wonder and joy.

The boys came tumbling down from their loft in a few minutes, and there was no more sleep to be had. Carol was up and out, and the voice of one or the other of them was continually raised in a shout of triumph over some new delight.

"I saw a fish in the brook!" shouted Harley under his mother's window. "It was only a little fellow, but maybe it'll grow bigger some day, and then we can fish!"

"You silly!" cried George. "It was a minnow. Minnows don't grow to be big. They're only good for bait!"

"Hush, George, there's a nest in the big tree. I've been watching and the mother bird is sitting on it. That was the father bird singing a while ago." This from Carol.

George, Harley, and Carol declared their intention of going to church. That had likely been the first bell that rang, their mother told them, and they would have plenty of time to get there if they hurried. It was only half-past nine. Country churches rang a bell then, and another at ten, and the final bell at half-past ten, probably. Possibly they had Sunday-school at ten. Anyhow, they could go and find out. It wouldn't matter if they were a little late the first time.

So they ate some breakfast in a hurry, took each a sandwich left from the night before, crossed the road, climbed the fence, and went joyously over the green fields to church, thinking how much nicer it was than walking down a brick-paved street, past the same old grimy houses to a dim, artificially lighted church.

Shirley took a survey of the larder, decided that roast chicken, potato croquettes, and peas would all warm up quickly, and, as there was plenty of ice cream left and some cakes, they would fare royally without any work; so she sat beside her mother and told the whole story of her ride, the finding of the barn, her visit to the Graham office, and all that transpired until the present time.

The mother listened, watching her child, but said no wore of her inner thoughts. If it occurred to her that her oldest daughter was fair to look upon, and that her winning ways, sweet, unspoiled face, and wistful eyes had somewhat to do with the price of their summer's abode, it would be no wonder. But she did not mean to trouble her child further. She would investigate for herself when opportunity offered. So she quieted all anxieties Shirley might have had about her sanction of their selection of a home, kissed Shirley, and told her she felt it in her bones she was going to get well right away.

And, indeed, there was much in the fact of the lifting of the burden of anxiety concerning where they should live that went to brighten the eyes of the invalid and strengthen her heart.

When the children came home from church Shirley was putting dinner on the table, and her mother was arrayed in a pretty kimono, a relic of their better days, and ready to be helped to the couch and wheeled out to the dining-room. It had been pleasant to see the children coming across the green meadow in the distance, and get things all ready for them when they rushed in hungry. Shirley was so happy she felt like crying.

After the dinner things were washed they shoved the couch into the living-room among the flowers, where George had built up a beautiful fire, for it was still chilly. The children gathered around their mother and talked, making plans for the summer, telling about the service they had attended, chattering like so many magpies. The mother lay and watched them and was content. Sometimes her eyes would search the dim, mellow rafters overhead, and glance along the stone walls, and she would say to herself: "This is a barn! I am living in a barn! My husband's children have come to this, that they have no place to live but a barn!" She was testing herself to see if the thought hurt her. But, looking on their happy faces, somehow she could not feel sad.

"Children," she said suddenly in one of the little lulls of conversation, "do you realize that Christ was born in a stable? It isn't so bad to live in a barn. We ought to be very thankful for this great splendid one!"

"Oh mother, dear! It is so beautiful of you to take it that way!" cried Shirley with tears in her eyes.

"Doris, you sing your little song about Jesus in the stable," said Carol. "I'll play it for you."

Doris, nothing loath, got a little stool, stood up beside her mother's couch, folded her small hands demurely, and began to sing without waiting for accompaniment:

"Away in a manger,

No trib for His head,

The litta Lord Jesus

Lay down His sveet head.

The tars in the haaven

Look down vhere 'e lay—

The litta Lord Jesus

As'eep in the hay.

"The catta are lowing,

The poor baby wates;

But the litta Lord Jesus

No cwyin' He mates.

I love Thee, Lord Jesus;

Look down fum the sky,

An' stay by my trib,

Watching my lul-la-by!"

Shirley kissed Doris, and then they began to sing other things, all standing around the piano. By and by that distant bell from the valley called again.

"There's a vesper service at five o'clock. Why don't you go, Shirley? You and George and Harley," said Carol.

"Me 'ant do too!" declared Doris earnestly, and it was finally decided that the walk would not be too long; so the boys, Shirley and the baby started off across the fields, while Carol stayed with her mother. And this time Mrs. Hollister heard all about Elizabeth and how she wanted Carol to come and see her sometime. Heard, too, about the proposed dance, and its quiet squelching by the brother. Heard, and looked thoughtful, and wondered more.

"Mother is afraid they are not quite our kind of people, dear!" she said gently. "You mustn't get your heart bound up in that girl. She may be very nice, but she's a society girl, and you are not, you know. It stands to reason she will have other interests pretty soon, and then you will be disappointed when she forgets all about you."

"She won't forget, mother, I know she won't!" declared Carol stoutly. "She's not that kind. She loves me; she told me so. She wanted to put one of her rings on my finger to 'bind our friendship,' only I wouldn't let her till I had asked you, because I didn't have any but grandmother's to give her, and I couldn't give her that."

"That was right, dear. You can't begin things like that. You would find a great many of them, and we haven't the money to keep up with a little girl who has been used to everything."

Carol's face went down. Tears began to come in her eyes.

"Can't we have even friends?" she said, turning her face away to hide the quiver in her lip, and the tears that were rolling down her cheeks.

"Yes, dear," said the mother sorrowfully, "but don't choose them from among another people. People who can't possibly have much in common with us. It is sure to hurt hard when there are differences in station like that."

"But I didn't choose them. They chose us!" declared Carol. "Elizabeth just went wild over us the first time she saw us, and her brother told Shirley he was glad, that it would do Elizabeth a lot of good to know us. He said, 'We've learned a lot of things from you already'; just like that, he said it! I was coming down the stairs behind them when they stood here talking one day, and I couldn't help hearing them."

"Yes?" said Mrs. Hollister thoughtfully. "Well, perhaps, but, dear, go slow and don't pin your heart to a friendship like that, for it will most likely be disappointing. Just be happy in what she has done for us already, and don't expect anything more. She may never come again. It may just have been a passing whim. And I don't want you to be always looking for her and always disappointed."

"I shall not be disappointed, mamma," said Carol decidedly. "You'll see!" and her face brightened.

Then as if to make good her words a big car came whirring up the road and stopped in front of the barn, and almost before she could get to the window to look out Carol heard Elizabeth's voice calling softly:

"Carol! Car-roll! Are you there?" and she flung the door open and rushed into her new friend's arms.

Graham came more slowly up the incline, smiling apologetically and hoping he didn't intrude, coming so soon.

Carol led them over to the invalid and introduced her friend, and the young man came after them.

"I'm afraid this is rather soon to obey your summons, Mrs. Hollister," he said engagingly, "but Elizabeth couldn't stand it without coming over to see if you really found the ice-cream freezer, so I thought we'd just drop in for a minute and see whether you were quite comfortable."

Somehow, suddenly, Mrs. Hollister's fears and conclusions concerning these two young people began to vanish, and in spite of her she felt just as Shirley had done, that they were genuine in their kindliness and friendship. Carol, watching her, was satisfied, and a glow of triumph shone in her eyes. Nevertheless, Mrs. Hollister gathered her caution about her as a garment, and in dignified and pleasant phrases thanked the two in such a way that they must see that neither she nor her children would ever presume upon what had been done for them, nor take it for more than a passing kindliness.

But to her surprise the young man did not seem to be more than half listening to her words. He seemed to be studying her face with deep intention that was almost embarrassing. The soft color stole into her thin cheeks, and she stopped speaking and looked at him in dismay.

"I beg your pardon," he said, seeing her bewilderment, "but you can't understand perhaps how interested I am in you. I am afraid I have been guilty of staring. You see it is simply amazing to me to find a woman of your refinement and evident culture and education who is content—I might even say joyful—to live in a barn! I don't know another woman who would be satisfied. And you seem to have brought up all your children with just such happy, adaptable natures, that it is a great puzzle to me. I—I—why, I feel sort of rebuked! I feel that you and your children are among the great of the earth. Don't thank Elizabeth and me for the little we have been able to do toward making this barn habitable. It was a sort of—I might say homage, due to you, that we were rendering. And now please don't think anything more about it. Let's just talk as if we were friends—that is, if you are willing to accept a couple of humble strangers among your list of friends."

"Why, surely, if you put it that way!" smiled the little woman. "Although I'm sure I don't know what else we could do but be glad and happy over it that we had a barn like this to come to under a sweet blue sky, with a bird and a tree thrown in, when we literally didn't know where we could afford to lay our heads. You know beggars shouldn't be choosers, but I'm sure one would choose a spacious place like this any day in preference to most of the ordinary city houses, with their tiny dark rooms, and small breathless windows."

"Even if 'twas called a barn?"

"Even if 'twas called a barn!" said the woman with a flitting dance in her eyes that reminded him of the girl Shirley.

"Well, I'm learning a lot, I tell you!" said the young man. "The more I see of you all, the more I learn. It's opened my eyes to a number of things in my life that I'm going to set right. By the way, is Miss Hollister here? I brought over a book I was telling her about the other day. I thought she might like to see it."

"She went over to the vesper service at the little church across the fields. They'll be coming home soon, I think. It must be nearly over."

He looked at his watch.

"Suppose I take the car and bring them back. You stay here, Elizabeth. I'll soon be back. I think I can catch them around by the road if I put on speed."

He was off, and the mother lay on the couch watching the two girls and wishing with all her heart that it were so that her children might have these two fine young people for friends. But of course such things could not very well be in this world of stern realities and multitudinous conventionalities. What, for instance, would be said in the social set to which the Grahams belonged if it were known that some of their intimate friends lived in a barn? No, such things did not happen even in books, and the mother lay still and sighed. She heard the chatter of the two girls.

"You're coming home with me to stay over Sunday pretty soon. Sidney said he would fix it all up with your mother pretty soon. We'll sleep together and have the grandest times. Mother likes me to have friends stay with me, but most of the girls I know are off at boarding-school now, and I'm dreadfully lonesome. We have tennis-courts and golf links and a bowling-alley. Do you play tennis? And we can go out in the car whenever we like. It's going to be grand. I'll show you my dog and my pony I used to ride. He's getting old now, and I'm too big for him, but I love him just the same. I have a saddle-horse, but I don't ride much. I'd rather go motoring with Sid——"

And so she rattled on, and the mother sighed for her little girl who was being tempted by a new and beautiful world, and had not the wherewithal to enter it, even if it were possible for her to do so.

Out in the sunset the car was speeding back again with the seats full, Doris chirping gleefully at the ride, for her fat legs had grown very weary with the long walk through the meadow and Shirley had been almost sorry she had taken her along.

The boys were shouting all sorts of questions about dogs and chickens and cars and a garden, and Graham was answering them all good-humoredly, now and then turning around to throw back a pleasant sentence and a smile at the quiet girl with the happy eyes sitting in the back seat with her arm around her little sister.

There was nothing notable about the ride to remember. It was just one of those beautiful bits of pleasantness that fit into the mosaic of any growing friendship, a bit of color without which the whole is not perfect. Shirley's part in it was small. She said little and sat listening happily to the boys' conversation with Graham. She had settled it with her heart that morning that she and the young man on that front seat had nothing in future to do with each other, but it was pleasant to see him sitting there talking with her brothers. There was no reason why she should not be glad for that, and glad he was not a snob. For every time she looked on his clean, frank face, and saw his nice gray eyes upon her, she was surer that he was not a snob.

The guests stayed a little while after they all got back, and accepted quite as a matter of course the dainty little lunch that Carol and Elizabeth, slipping away unobserved, prepared and brought in on trays,—some of the salad left from dinner, some round rolls that Shirley had brought out with her Saturday, cut in two and crisply toasted, cups of delicious cocoa, and little cakes. That was all, but it tasted fine, and the two self-invited guests enjoyed it hugely. Then they all ranged themselves around the piano and sang hymns, and it is safe to say that the guests at least had not spent as "Sabbathy" a Sabbath in all their lives. Elizabeth was quite astonished when she suggested that they sing a popular song to have Carol answer in a polite but gently reproving tone, "Oh, not to-day, you know."

"Why not? Doesn't your mother like it?" whispered Elizabeth.

"Why, we don't any of us usually sing things like that on Sunday, you know. It doesn't seem like Sunday. It doesn't seem quite respectful to God." Carol was terribly embarrassed and was struggling to make her idea plain.

"Oh!" Elizabeth said, and stood looking wistfully, wonderingly at her friend, and finally stole out a soft hand and slipped it into Carol's, pressing her fingers as if to make her know she understood. Then they lifted up their voices again over the same hymn-book:

"Thine earthly Sabbaths, Lord, we love,

But there's a nobler rest above;

To that our longing souls aspire

With cheerful hope and strong desire."

Graham looked about on the group as they sang, his own fine tenor joining in the words, his eyes lingering on the earnest face of his little sister as she stood arm in arm with the other girl, and was suddenly thrilled with the thought of what a Sabbath might be, kept in this way. It had never appealed to him quite like that before. Sabbath-keeping had seemed a dry, thankless task for a few fanatics; now a new possibility loomed vaguely in his mind. He could see that people like this could really make the Sabbath something to love, not just a day to loll through and pass the time away.

When they finally went away there was just a streak of dull red left in the western horizon where the day had disappeared, and all the air was seething with sweet night sounds and odors, the dampness of the swamps striking coolly in their faces as the car sped along.

"Sidney," said Elizabeth after a long time, "did you ever feel as if God were real?"

"Why, how do you mean, kid?" asked the brother, rather embarrassed. These subjects were not discussed at all in the Graham household.

"Did you ever feel as if there really was a God somewhere, like a person, that could see and hear you and know what you did and how you felt to Him? Because they do. Carol said they didn't sing 'Tipperary' on Sunday because it didn't seem quite respectful to God, and I could see she really meant it. It wasn't just because her mother said she had to or anything like that. She thought so herself."

"H'm!" said Graham thoughtfully. "Well, they're rather remarkable people, I think."

"Well, I think so too, and I think it's about time you fixed it up with mamma to let Carol come and visit me."

"I'm going to get mother to go out there and call this week if I can," said Graham after another longer pause, and then added: "I think she will go and I think she will like them. After that we'll see, kid. Don't you worry. They're nice, all right." He was thinking of the look on Shirley's face as she sat at the piano playing for them all to sing.