Opportunities

CHAPTER I

It was the morning after that Sunday when Matilda had been baptized. The girls came down to prepare breakfast as usual; Maria in a very unsettled humour. She was cloudy and captious to a degree that Matilda could not understand. The kitchen was hot; the butter was soft; the milk was turned; the bread was dry. All things went wrong.

"It is no wonder the bread is dry," said Matilda; "it has been baked ever since last Friday."

"Thursday. I didn't say it was a wonder. Aunt Candy will have the bread dry. I hate it!"

"And it is no wonder the butter is soft, if you keep it up here in the kitchen. The kitchen must be hot, with this hot stove. But the milkman will be along directly."

"No, he won't. We always have to wait for him; or take the old milk. And I can't be bothered to keep the butter down cellar and be running for it fifty times in an hour. I have enough to do as it is. Whatever possessed Aunt Erminia to want corn bread this morning!"

"Does she want corn bread?"

"Yes."

"Well, corn bread is nice. I am glad of it."

"You wouldn't be glad if you had to make it. There! I knew it would be so. There isn't a speck of soda. Put on your bonnet, Matilda, and run round to Mr. Sample's and get some soda, will you? – and be quick. We shall be late, and then there will be a row."

"There won't be a row, Maria. Aunt Candy is always quiet."

"I wish she wouldn't, then. I hate people who are always quiet. I would rather they would flare out now and then. It's safer."

"For what? Safer, Maria?"

"Do go along and get your soda!" exclaimed Maria. "Do you think it will be safe to be late with breakfast?"

Maria was so evidently out of order this morning, that her sister thought the best way was to let her alone; only she asked, "Aren't you well, Maria?" and got a sharp answer; then she went out.

It was a delicious spring morning. The air stirred in her face its soft and glad breaths of sweetness; the sunlight was the very essence of promise; the village and the green trees, now out in leaf, shone and basked in the fair day. It was better than breakfast, to be out in the air. Matilda went round the corner, into Butternut Street, and made for Mr. Sample's grocery store, every step being a delight. Why could not the inside world be as pleasant as the outside? Matilda was musing and wishing, when just before she reached Mr. Sample's door, she saw what made her forget everything else; even the mischievous little boy who belonged to Mrs. Dow. What was he doing here in Butternut Street? Matilda's steps slackened. The boy knew her, for he looked and then grinned, and then bringing a finger alongside of his nose in a peculiar and mysterious expressiveness, he repeated his old words —

"Ain't you green?"

"I suppose so," said Matilda. "I dare say I am. What then? Green is not the worst colour."

The boy looked at her, a little confounded.

"If you would come to Sunday-school," Matilda went on, "you would be a better colour than you are – by and by."

"What colour be I?" said the boy.

"You'd be a better colour," said Matilda. "Just come and see."

"I ain't green," the boy remonstrated.

Matilda passed on, went into Mr. Sample's and got her soda. She had a few cents of change. A thought came into her head. Peeping out, she saw that Mrs. Dow's boy was still lingering where she had left him. Immediately Matilda requested to have the worth of those cents in sugared-almonds; and with her little packages went into the street again. The boy eyed her.

"What is your name?" said Matilda.

"Hain't got none."

"Yes, you have. What does your mother call you at home?"

"She calls me – the worst of all her plagues," said the fellow, grinning.

"No, no; but when she calls you from somewhere – what does she call you?"

"She calls me out of the garding and down from the attic."

"Look here," said Matilda, showing a sugar-plum; "I'll give you that, if you will tell me."

The boy eyed it, and her, and finally said —

"Lem."

"Your name is Lem?"

He nodded.

"There, Lem, is a sugar-plum for you. Now if you'll come to Sunday-school next Sunday, and stay and behave yourself, I'll give you three more."

"Three more?" said the boy.

"Yes. Now come, and you'll like it."

And Matilda sped home with her soda.

"I should think you had been making the soda," said Maria; "you have been long enough. What kept you?"

"How do they make soda, I wonder?" said Matilda, looking at it. "Do you know, Maria?"

"I have enough to do to know how to get breakfast. Tilly, run and grind the coffee and make it – quick, will you? now I am in a hurry."

Matilda thought Maria might have done it herself, while she was waiting for the soda. But she said nothing of that. In ten minutes more the coffee was made, the corn bread was ready, and the ladies came down.

Matilda was in a mood as gentle as the morning, and almost as cloudless. Her morning's work and walk and the meeting with Lem Dow had given her an appetite; and the work of the night before had left a harmony in her spirit, as if sweet music were sounding there. Her little face was thus like the very morning itself, shining with the fair shining of inward beauty; in contrast with all the other faces at the table. For Clarissa's features were coldly handsome and calm; Mrs. Candy's were set and purposeful; and poor Maria's were sadly clouded and out of humour. Matilda took little heed of them all; she was thinking of Lemuel Dow.

"Matilda," said her aunt, suddenly – "I wish you to come to me every morning to read. A person who has taken the step you took last night, is no longer a child, but deserves to be treated as a woman. It is necessary that you should fit yourself for a woman's place. Come to me at ten o'clock. I will have you read to me some books that will make you better understand the things you have taken upon you, and the things you have done."

"Why, I am a child yet, Aunt Candy," Matilda answered in some dismay.

"You think so, do you?"

"Yes, ma'am, – I feel so; and I am."

"I thought you considered yourself more than a child. But you have assumed a woman's place, and it is now necessary that you should be fitted for it. I think the best way is to get the preparation first; but in your church, it seems, they prefer the other course. You are under my care in the house, at any rate, and I shall do my duty by you."

"I do not understand you, Aunt Candy," Matilda spoke, quite bewildered.

"No, my dear, I suppose not. That is just what I think so objectionable. But we will do what we can to remedy it."

"What do you want to prepare me for, Aunt Erminia?"

"For your position, my dear, as a member of the Church. That is not a child's position. You have placed yourself in it; and now the question is how to enable you to maintain it properly. I cannot treat you as a child any longer."

Matilda wondered very much how she was to be treated. However, silence seemed the wisest plan at present.

"I suppose I am a child still," remarked Maria.

"I have never observed anything inconsistent with that supposition, my dear," her aunt serenely answered.

"And if I had been baptized last night, you would have more respect for me," went on poor Maria.

"My respect is not wholly dependent on forms, my dear. If it had been done in a proper way, of course, things would be different from what they are. I should have more respect for you."

"Clarissa has done it in a proper way, I suppose?"

"When she was of a proper age – yes; certainly."

"And then, what did she promise? All that they promised last night?"

"The vows are much the same."

"Well, people ought not to make vows till they are ready to keep them – ought they?"

"Certainly they should not."

"Well – "

"My dear, it is a very bad habit to begin every sentence with a 'well.' You do it constantly."

"Well, Aunt Candy – "

"There!" exclaimed Clarissa. "Again."

"Well, I don't care," said Maria. "I can't help it. I don't know when I do it. I was going to ask – and you put everything out of my head. – Aunt Candy, do you think Clarissa has given up, really, the pomps and vanities and all that, you know? She spent twenty-four dollars, I heard her say, on the trimming of that muslin dress; and she bought a parasol the other day for ten dollars, when one for three would have done perfectly well; and she pays always twelve dollars for her boots, twelve and ten dollars; when she could get nice ones for four and five. Now what's that?"

"It's impertinence," said Clarissa. "And untruth; for the four and five dollar boots hurt my feet."

"They are exactly the same," said Maria; "except the kid and the trimming and the beautiful making."

"Very well," said Clarissa, "I have a right to wear comfortable shoes, if I can get them."

"Then you have a right to pomps and vanities," returned Maria; "but I say you haven't a right, after you have declared and sworn you would have nothing to do with them."

"Mamma," said Clarissa, but with heightened colour, "Is this a child?"

"After the Shadywalk pattern," Mrs. Candy answered.

"Girls in Shadywalk have a little sense, when they get to be as old as sixteen," Maria went on. "Where you have been, perhaps they do not grow up so fast."

"People would put weights on their heads if they did," said Clarissa.

"It doesn't matter," said Maria. "You can imagine that I am as old as you are; and I say that it is more respectable not to make promises and vows than to make them and not keep them."

"Do not answer her, my dear," said Mrs. Candy.

"And that is the reason why I have not been baptized, or whatever you call it – "

"I never said so, Maria," said her aunt. "The two things are not the same."

"Imagine it!" said Clarissa.

"Well, you said just now – I don't know what you said! – but you said at any rate that if it had been done in a proper way, you would think more of me; and I say, that it is better not to make vows till you are ready to keep them. I am not ready to give up dancing; and I would have expensive hats and dresses, and feathers, and watches, and chains, and everything pretty that money can buy, if I had the money; and I like them; and I want them."

"I have not given up dancing," said Clarissa.

"Nor other things either," retorted Maria; "but they are pomps and vanities. That is what I say. You promised you would have nothing to do with them."

"Mamma!" said Clarissa, appealingly.

"Yes, my dear," said her mother. "The amount of ignorance in Maria's words discourages me from trying to answer them."

"Ignorance and superstition, mamma."

"And superstition," said Mrs. Candy.

"Matilda thinks just the same way," Clarissa went on, meeting the broad open astonished eyes of the little girl.

"Of course," said Mrs. Candy. "Matilda is too much a child to exercise her own judgment on these matters. She just takes what has been told her."

"Have you given up dancing too, Tilly?" Clarissa went on.

"I have never thought about it, Cousin Clarissa."

"Matilda all over!" exclaimed the young lady. "She has not thought about it, mamma. When she thinks about it, she will know what her part is."

"Very well," said Mrs. Candy. "She might do worse."

"I suppose you think I can't think," said poor Maria.

"No, my dear; I only think you have not begun yet to use your power in that direction. When you do, you will see things differently."

"It would take a good deal of thinking, to make me see that giving up the world and going into it were the same thing," said Maria. "And I don't mean to promise to do it till I'm ready."

"Mamma, this is not very pleasant," said Clarissa.

"No, my dear. We will leave the field to Maria. Come to me at ten o'clock, Matilda."

The two ladies filed off up-stairs, and Maria sat down to cry. Matilda began to clear the table, going softly back and forth between the basement and the kitchen as if there were trouble in the house. Maria sobbed.

"Ain't they mean?" she exclaimed, starting up at length. Matilda was busy going in and out, and said nothing.

"Matilda! Why don't you speak? I say, ain't they mean?"

"There's no use in talking so, Maria," said her little sister, looking sorrowful.

"Yes, there is. People ought to hear the truth."

"But if you know what is right, why don't you do it, Maria?"

"I do – as well as I can."

"But, Maria! – I mean, about what you were saying; giving up whatever is not right."

"Things are right for other people, that are not right for members of the Church. That's why I want to wait awhile. I am not ready."

"But, Maria, what makes them right for other people?"

"They have not promised anything about them. Clarissa has promised, and she don't do."

"You have not promised."

"No, of course I haven't."

"But if they are right things, Maria, why should you, or anybody, promise not to have anything to do with them?"

"Oh, you are too wise, Matilda!" her sister answered impatiently. "There is no need for you to go to read with Aunt Candy; you know everything already."

The rest of the morning was very silent between the sisters, till it came to the time for Matilda to present herself in her aunt's room. There meanwhile a consultation had been held.

"Mamma, that girl is getting unendurable."

"Must wait a little while, my dear."

"What will you do with her then?"

"Something. I can send her to school, at any rate."

"But the expense, mamma?"

"It is not much, at the district school. That is where she has been going."

"Matilda too?"

"I suppose that will be the best place. I am not sure about sending Matilda. She's a fine child."

"She will be handsome, mamma."

"She is very graceful now. She has a singular manner."

"But she is spoiled, mamma!"

"I shall unspoil her. Tilly is very young yet, and she has not had enough to do. I shall give her something else to think of, and get these absurdities out of her head. She just wants something to do."

"Mamma, she is not an easy child to influence. She says so little and keeps her own counsel. I think you don't know her."

"I never saw the child yet that was a match for me," said Mrs. Candy, complacently. "I like best one that has some stuff in her. Maria is a wet sponge; you can squeeze her dry in a minute; no character, no substance. Matilda is different. I should like to keep Tilly."

"If you could keep her out of Mr. Richmond's influence, mamma, it would be a help. That church ruins her. She will be fit for nothing."

"I will take the nonsense out of her," said Mrs. Candy. "I cannot take her out of the church, while we remain here, for that would raise a hue and cry; but I will do as well. Here she comes."

A little soft knock at the door was followed by the little girl herself; looking demure and sweet, after her fashion lately. It used to be arch and sweet. But Matilda had been very sober since her mother's death. The room into which she came had an air now very unlike all the rest of the house. Mrs. Englefield's modest preparations for the comfort of her guests were quite overlaid and lost sight of. It was as if some fairy had shaken her hand over the room, and let fall pleasant things everywhere. On the Marseilles quilt a gorgeous silk coverlet lay folded. On the dressing-table a confusion of vases and bottles, in coloured glass and painted china, were mixed up with combs and brushes and fans and watch pockets and taper stands. The table in the middle of the floor was heaped with elegant books and trinkets and work-boxes and writing implements; and book stands and book shelves were about, and soft foot cushions were dropped on the carpet, and easy arm-chairs stood conveniently, and some faint perfume breathed all through the room. Mrs. Candy was in one arm-chair and Clarissa in another.

Matilda was bidden to take a cricket, which she privately resented, and then her aunt placed in her hands a largish volume and pointed her to the page where she was to begin. Glancing up and down, at the top of the page and the beginning of the book, Matilda found it was a treatise, or a collection of advices, for the instruction of persons about to be received into the Church. Not a little dismayed by this discovery, no less than by the heavy look of the pages, Matilda however began her reading. It was dragging work, as she expected. Her thoughts wandered. What could her aunt think she wanted with this, when she had Mr. Richmond's instructions? What could these ponderous reasonings be expected to add to his words? The immediate effect of them certainly was not salutary to Matilda's mind.

"My dear, you do not read so well as usual," her aunt said at length.

Matilda paused, glad to stop even for a little.

"Your sentences come heavily from your tongue."

"Yes. They are heavy, aunt Candy."

"My dear! Those are the words of the Rev. Benjamin Orderly – a very famous writer, and loved by all good people. Those are excellent words that you have been reading."

Matilda said nothing further.

"Did you understand them?"

"They did not interest me, aunt Candy."

"My dear, they ought to interest one who has just taken such a step as you have taken."

Matilda wondered privately whether being baptized ought properly to have any effect to change the natural taste and value of things; but she did not answer.

"You understood what you read, did you?"

Matilda coloured a little.

"Aunt Candy, it was not interesting, and I did not think about it."

Mrs. Candy drew the book severely from Matilda's hand.

"After taking such a step as you took last night, you ought to try to be interested, if it were only for consistency's sake. Do you see that you were hasty? A person who does not care about the privileges and duties of church membership most certainly ought not to be a church member."

"But, aunt Candy, I do care," said Matilda.

"So it seems."

"I care about it as the Bible speaks of it; and as Mr. Richmond talks about it."

"You are very fond of Mr. Richmond, I know."

Matilda added nothing to that, and there was a pause.

"Do you want anything more of me, Aunt Candy?"

"Yes. I want to teach you something useful. Here are a quantity of stockings of yours that need mending. I am going to show you how to mend them. Go and get your work-box and bring it here."

"Couldn't you tell me what you want me to do, Aunt Candy, and let me go and do it where Maria is?"

"No. Maria is busy. And I have got to take a good deal of pains to teach you, Tilly, what I want you to know. Go fetch your box and work things."

Matilda slowly went. It was so pleasant to be out of that perfumed room and out of sight of the Rev. Mr. Orderly's writings. She lingered in the passages; looked over the balusters and listened, hoping that by some happy chance Maria might make some demand upon her. None came; the house was still; and Matilda had to go back to her aunt. She felt like a prisoner.

"Now I suppose you have no darning cotton," said Mrs. Candy. "Here is a needleful. Thread it, and then I will show you what next."

"This is three or four needlefuls, aunt Candy. I will break it. I cannot sew with such a thread."

"Stop. Yes, you can. Don't break it. I will show you. Thread your needle."

"I haven't one big enough."

That want was supplied.

"Now you shall begin with running this heel," said Mrs. Candy. "See, you shall put this marble egg into the stocking, to darn upon. Now look here. You begin down here, at the middle, so – and take up only one thread at a stitch, do you see? and skip so many threads each time – "

"But there is no hole there, Aunt Erminia."

"I know that. Heels should always be run before they come to holes. There are half-a-dozen heels here, I should think, that require to be run. Now, do you see how I do it? You may take the stocking, and when you have darned a few rows, come and let me see how you get on."

Matilda in a small fit of despair took the stocking to a little distance and sat down to work. The marble egg was heavy to hold. It took a long while to go up one side of the heel and down the other. She was tired of sitting under constraint and so still. And her Aunt Candy seemed like a jailer, and that perfumed room like a prison. The quicker her work could be done, the better for her. So Matilda reflected, and her needle went accordingly.

"I have done it, Aunt Erminia," she proclaimed at last.

"Done the heel?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You cannot possibly. Come here and let me look at it. Why, of course! That is not done as I showed you, Tilly; these rows of darning should be close together, one stitch just in the middle between two other stitches; you have just gone straggling over the whole heel. That will have to come all out."

"But there is no hole in it," said Matilda.

"Always darn before the holes come. That will not do. You must pick it all out, Tilly."

"Now?" said Matilda, despairingly.

"Certainly now. You make yourself trouble in that way. I am sorry. Pick it all neatly out."

Matilda went at it impatiently; tugged at the thread; pulled the heel of her stocking into a very intricate drawn-up state; then had to smooth it out again with difficulty.

"This is very hard to come out," she said.

"Yes, it is bad picking," said her aunt, composedly.

Matilda was very impatient and very weary besides. However, work did it, in time.

"Now see if you can do it better," said Mrs. Candy.

"Now, Aunt Erminia?"

"Certainly. It is your own fault that you have made such a business of it. You should have done as I told you."

"But I am very tired."

"I dare say you are."

Matilda was very much in the mind to cry; but that would not have mended matters, and would have hurt her pride besides. She went earnestly to work with her darning needle instead. She could use it nicely, she found, with giving pains and time enough. But it took a great while to do a little. Up one side and down the other; then up that side and down the first; threading long double needlefuls, and having them used up with great rapidity; Matilda seemed to grow into a darning machine. She was very still; only a deep-drawn long breath now and then heaved her little breast. Impatience faded, however, and a sort of dulness crept over her. At last she became very tired, so tired that pride gave way, and she said so.

Mrs. Candy remarked that she was sorry.

"Aunt Candy, I think Maria may want me by this time."

"Yes. That is of no consequence."

"Maria has got no one to help her."

"She will not hurt herself," Clarissa observed.

"Aunt Erminia, wouldn't you just as lieve I should finish this by and by?"

"I will think of that," said her aunt. "All you have to do, is to work on."

"I am very tired of it!"

"That is not a reason for stopping, my dear. Rather the contrary. One must learn to do things after one is tired. That is a lesson I learned a great while ago."

"I cannot work so well or so fast, when I am tired," said Matilda.

"And I cannot work at all while you are talking to me."

Matilda's slow fingers drew the needle in and out for some time longer. Then to her great joy, the dinner bell rang.

"What does Maria mean?" said Mrs. Candy, looking at her watch. "It wants an hour of dinner-time. Run and see what it is, Matilda."

Matilda ran down-stairs.

"Do you think I have five pairs of hands?" inquired Maria, indignantly. "It is nice for you to be playing up-stairs, and I working as hard as I can in the kitchen! I won't stand this, I can tell you."

"Playing!" echoed Matilda. "Well, Maria, what do you want done?"

"Look and see. You have eyes. About everything is to be done. There's the castors to put in order, and the lettuce to get ready – I wish lettuce wouldn't grow! – and the table to set, and the sauce to make for the pudding. Now hurry."

It was absolutely better than play, to fly about and do all these things, after the confinement of darning stockings. Matilda's glee equalled Maria's discomfiture. Only, when it was all done and the dinner ready, Matilda stood still to think. "I am sorry I was so impatient this morning up-stairs," she said to herself.