Mrs. Carpenter could but now and then dare to spend twenty cents for car hire to take her and Rotha to the Park and back again. The heats of July were very hard to bear; the heats of August were more oppressive still; and when September came with its enervating moist, muggy, warm days, Mrs. Carpenter could scarcely keep her place and her work at her window. All day she could not. She was obliged to stop and lie by. Appetite failed, meals were not enticing; and on the whole, Mrs. Marble was not at all satisfied with the condition of either of her lodgers.
The cooler weather and then the frosts wrought some amendment. Yet all the autumn did not put them back where the spring had found them; and late in November Mrs. Carpenter took a cold which she could not immediately get rid of. A bad cough set in; strength rather failed than grew; and the thin hands which were so unceasingly busy with their work, became more and more transparently thin. Mrs. Carpenter needed rest; she knew it; and the thought came to her that it might be duty, and even it might be necessity, to apply to her sister for help. Surely it could not be refused?
She was often busy with this thought.
One day she had undertaken a longer walk than usual, to carry home some articles of fine sewing that she had finished. She would not send Rotha so far alone, but she took her along for company and for the air and exercise. Her way led her into the finer built part of the city. Coming down Broadway, she was stopped a minute by a little crowd on the sidewalk, just as a carriage drew up and a lady with a young girl stepped out of it and went into Tiffany's; crossing the path of Mrs. Carpenter and Rotha. The lady she recognized as her own sister.
"Mother," said Rotha, as they presently went on their way again, "isn't that a handsome carriage?"
"Very."
"What is the coachman dressed so for?"
"That is what they call a livery."
"Well, what _is_ it? He has top boots and a gold band round his hat. What for? I see a great many coachmen and footmen dressed up so or some other way. What is the use of it?"
"No use, that I know."
"Then what is it for?"
"I suppose they think it looks well."
"So it does. But how rich people must be, mother, when their servants can dress handsomer than we ever could. And their own dresses! Did you see the train of that lady's dress?"
"Yes."
"Beautiful black silk, ever so much of it, sweeping over the sidewalk. She did not even lift it up, as if she cared whether it went into the dirt or not."
"I suppose she did not care," said Mrs. Carpenter mechanically, like a person who is not giving much thought to her answers.
"Then she must be _very_ rich indeed. I suppose, mother, her train would make you a whole nice dress."
"Hardly so much of it as that," said Mrs. Carpenter.
"No, no; I mean the cost of it. Mother, I wonder if it is _right_, for that woman to trail so much silk on the ground, and you not to be able to get yourself one good dress?"
"It makes no difference in my finances, whether she trails it or not."
"No, but it ought."
"How should it?"
Rotha worked awhile at this problem in silence.
"Mother, if nobody used what he didn't want, don't you think there would be enough for the people who do want? You know what I mean?"
"I know what you mean. But how should the surplus get to the people who want it?"
"Why!--that's very simple."
"Not so simple as you think."
"Mother, that is the way people did in the second chapter of Acts, that we were reading yesterday. Nobody said that anything he had was his own."
"That was when everybody was full of the love of Christ. I grant you, Rotha, that makes things easy. My child, let us take care we act on that principle."
"We have nothing to give," said Rotha. "Mother, how that girl was dressed too, that came out of that same carriage. Did you see her?"
"Hardly."
"She was about as old as I am, I guess. Mother, she had a feather in her hat and a beautiful little muff, and a silk frock too, though there was no train to it. Her silk was red--dark red," Rotha added with a sigh.
Mrs. Carpenter had been struck and moved, as well as her daughter, by the appearance of the figures in question, though, as she said, she had scarce seen more than one of them. But her thoughts were in a different channel.
When she got home, contrary to all her wont, Mrs. Carpenter sat down and put her head in her hands, instead of going to work. She said she was a little tired, which was very true; but the real reason was a depression and at the same time a perturbation of mind which would not let her work. She had been several times lately engaged with the thought, that it might be better, that it might be her duty, to make herself known to her sister. She felt that her strength lately had been decreasing; it had been with much difficulty that she accomplished her full tale of work; help, even a little, would be very grateful, and a friend for Rotha might be of the greatest importance. It was over with those thoughts. That one glimpse of her sister as she swept past, had shewn her the utter futility of such an appeal as she had thought of making. There was something in the whole air and style of the rich woman which convinced Mrs. Carpenter that she would not patiently hear of poor relations in her neighbourhood; and that help given, even if she gave it, would be so given that it would be easier to do without it than to accept it. She was thrown back upon herself; and the check and the disappointment shewed how much, secretly she had been staying herself upon this hope which had failed her.
She said nothing to her daughter, and Rotha never knew what that encounter had been. But a few days later, finding herself still not gaining strength, and catching at any thread of hope or help, Mrs. Carpenter took another long walk and delivered at its place of address the letter which her English guest had left her. She hardly expected ever to hear anything from it again; and in fact it was long before she did hear either of the letter or of its writer.
The months of winter went somewhat painfully along. Mrs. Carpenter's health did not mend, and the constant sewing became more and more difficult to bear. Mrs. Carpenter now more frequently went out with her work herself; leaving Rotha to make up the lost time by doing some of the plainer seams, for which she was quite competent.
CHAPTER IV.
A VISITER.
One cold afternoon in the latter part of January, a stranger came to Mrs. Marble's door and begged for a few minutes' interview. He did not make it longer; but after a very brief conversation on religious matters, and giving her a tract or two, inquired if there was anybody else in the house?
"Lodgers," said Mrs. Marble. "They've got the second floor. A woman and a girl."
"What sort of people?"
"Well, I should say they were an uncommon sort. Your sort, I guess. Religious. I mean the mother is. I reckon the little one haint anything o' that kind about her."
"Then they pay their rent, I suppose?"
"As regular as clockwork. 'Taint always easy, I know; but it comes up to the day. I don't believe much in the sort o' religion that don't pay debts."
"Nor I; but sometimes, you know, the paying is not only difficult but impossible. Why is it difficult in this case?"
"Don't ask _me!_ Because another sort of religious folk, that go to church regular enough and say their prayers, won't pay honest wages for honest work. How is a woman to live, that can't get more than a third or a quarter the value o' what she does? So they _don't_ live; they die; and that's how it's goin' to be here."
A tear was glittering in Mrs. Marble's honest eyes, while at the same time she bit off her words as if they had been snap gingerbread.
"Is it so bad as that?" asked the visiter.
"Well, I don' know if you ought to call it, 'bad,'" said Mrs. Marble with a compound expression. "When livin' aint livin' no longer, then dyin' aint exactly dyin'. 'Taint the worst thing, anyhow; if it warnt for the folk left behind. If I was as ready as she is, I wouldn't mind goi
n', I guess. I s'pose she thinks of her child some."
"Would they receive a visit from me?"
"I don' know; but they don't have many. So long as they've been here, and that's more'n a year now, there aint a livin' soul as has called to ask after 'em. I guess they'd receive most anybody that come with a friend's face. Shall I ask 'em?"
"Not _that_, but if they will see me. I shall be much obliged."
Mrs. Marble laid down her work and tripped up stairs.
"Rotha," she said putting her head inside the door, "here's somebody to see you."
The girl started up and a colour came into her face, as she eagerly asked, "Who?"
"I don't know him from Adam. He's a sort of a missionary; they come round once in a while; and he wants to see you."
"Mother's gone out," said Rotha, her colour fading as quick as it had risen.
"May he come and see you? He's a nice lookin' feller."
"I don't care," said Rotha. "I don't want to see any missionary."
"O well! it won't hurt you to see this one, I guess."
A few minutes after came a tap at the door, and Rotha with a mingling of unwillingness and curiosity, opened it. What she saw was not exactly what she had expected; curiosity grew and unwillingness abated. She asked the stranger in with tolerable civility. He _was_ nice looking, she confessed to herself, and very nicely dressed! not at all the rubbishy exterior which Rotha somehow associated with her idea of missionaries. He came in and sat down, quite like an ordinary man; which was soothing.
"Mother is out," Rotha announced shortly.
"It is so much the kinder of you to let me come in."
"I was not thinking of kindness," said Rotha.
"No? Of what then?
"Nothing in particular. You do not want kindness."
"I beg your pardon. Everybody wants it."
"Not kindness _from_ everybody then."
"I do."
"But some people can do without it."
"Can they? What sort of people?"
"Why, a great many people. Those that have all they want already."
"I never saw any of that sort of people," said the stranger gravely. "Pray, did you?"
"I thought I had."
"And you thought I was one of them?"
"I believe so."
"You were mistaken in me. Probably you were mistaken also in the other instances. Perhaps you were thinking of the people who have all that money can buy?"
"Perhaps," Rotha assented.
"Do you think money can buy all things?"
"No," said Rotha, beginning to recover her usual composure; "but the people who have all that money can buy, can do without the other things."
"What do you mean by the 'other things'?"
Rotha did not answer.
"I suppose kindness is one of them, as we started from that."
Rotha was still silent.
"Do you think you could afford to do without kindness?"
"If I had money enough," Rotha said bluntly.
"And what would you buy with money, that would be better?"
"O plenty!" said Rotha. "Yes, indeed! I would stop mother's working; and I would buy our old home, and we would go away from this place and never come back to it. I would have somebody to do the work that I do, too; and I would have a garden, and plenty of flowers, and plenty of everything."
"And live without friends?"
"We always did," said Rotha. "We never had friends. O friends!--everybody in the village and in the country was a friend; but you know what I mean; nobody that we cared for."
"Then you have no friends here in New York?"
"No."
"I should think you would have stayed where, as you say, everybody was a friend."
"Yes, but we couldn't."
"You said, you would if you could stop your mother's working. Do you think she would like that?"
"O she's tired to death!" said Rotha; and her eyes reddened in a way that shewed there were at least two sides to her character. "She is not strong at all, and she wants rest. Of course she would like it. Not to have to do any more than she likes, I mean."
"Then perhaps she would not choose to take some work I was thinking to offer her. Or perhaps you would not take it?" he added smiling.
"We _must_ take it," said Rotha, "if we can get it. What is it?"
"A set of shirts. A dozen."
"Mother gets seventy five cents a piece, if they are tucked and stitched."
"That is not my price, however. I like my work particularly done, and I give two dollars a piece."
"Two dollars for one shirt?" inquired Rotha.
"That is my meaning. Do you think your mother will take them?"
For all answer the girl clapped her two hands together.
"Then you are not a master tailor?" she asked.
"No."
"I thought maybe you were. I don't like them. What are you, please?"
"If I should propose myself as a friend, would you allow it?"
Is this a "kindness"? was the suspicion that instantly darted into Rotha's mind. The visiter saw it in her face, and could have smiled; took care to do no such thing.
"That is a question for mother to answer," she said coolly.
"When it is put to her. I put the question to you."
"Do you mean, that you are talking of being a friend to _me?_"
"Is that too bold a proposition?"
"No--but it cannot be true."
"Why not?"
"You cannot want me for a friend. You do not know me a bit."
"Pardon me. And my proposal was, that I should be a friend to _you_."
"I always thought there were two sides to a friendship."
"True; and in time, perhaps, when you come to know me as well as I know you, perhaps you will be my friend as well."
"How should you know me?" said Rotha quickly.
"People's thoughts and habits of feeling have a way of writing themselves somehow in their faces, and voices, and movements. Did you know that?"
"No--" Rotha said doubtfully.
"They do."
"But you don't know me."
"Will you put it to the proof? But do you like to hear the truth spoken about yourself?"
"I don't know. I never tried."
"Shall I try you? I think I see before me a person who likes to have her own way--and has it."
"You are wrong there," said Rotha. "If I had my own way, I should not be doing what I am doing; no indeed! I should be going to school."
"I did not mean that your will could get the better of all circumstances; only of the will of other people. How is that?"
"I suppose everybody likes to have his own way," said Rotha in defence.
"Probably; but not every one gets it. Then, when upon occasion your will is crossed, whether by persons or circumstances, you do not take it very patiently."
"Does anybody?"
"Some people. But on these occasions you are apt to shew your displeasure impatiently--sometimes violently."
"How do you know?" said Rotha wonderingly. "You cannot see that in my face _now?_"
And she began curiously to examine the face opposite to her, to see if it too had any disclosures to make. He smiled.
"Another thing,--" he went on. "You have never yet learned to care for others more than for yourself."
"Does anybody?" said Rotha.
"How is it with your mother?"
"Mother?-- But then, mother and I are very different"
"Did I not intimate that?"
"But I mean I am naturally different from her. It is not only because she is a Christian."
"Why are you not a Christian too?"
Rotha hesitated. Her interlocutor was certainly a great stranger; and as certainly she had not found it possible to read his face; notwithstanding, two effects had resulted from the interview thus far; she believed in him, and he was
somewhat imposing to her. Dress and manner might have a little to do with this; poor Rotha had rarely in her short life spoken to any one who had the polish of manner that belongs to good breeding and the habit of society; but that was not the whole. She felt the security and the grace with which every word was said, and she trusted his face. At the same time she rebelled against the slight awe he inspired, and was a little afraid of some lurking "kindness" under all this extraordinary interest and affability. Her answer was delayed and then came somewhat defiantly.
"I never wanted to be a Christian."
"That answer has the merit of truth," said her visiter calmly. "You have mentioned the precise reason that keeps people out of the kingdom of heaven. 'Ye will not come unto me, that ye might have life,' the Lord said to some of them when he was upon earth. 'When they shall see him, there is no beauty that they should desire him.'"
"Well, I cannot help that," said Rotha.
"No,--" said her visiter slowly,