The Letter of Credit

She found her aunt's house in a state of preparation; covers off the drawing-room furniture, greens disposed about the walls, servants busy. Mrs. Busby was in her dressing-room; and there too, on the sofa, in mere wantonness of idleness, for she was not sick, lay Antoinette; a somewhat striking figure, in a dress of white silk, and looking very pretty indeed. Also looking as if she knew it.

"Good morning, Rotha!" she cried. "This is the dress I am to wear to- morrow. I'm trying it on."

"She's very ridiculous," Mrs. Busby remarked, in a smiling tone of complacency.

"What is to be to-morrow?" Rotha inquired pleasantly. The question brought Antoinette up to a sitting posture.

"Why don't you know?" she said. "Don't you know? Mamma, is it possible anybody of Rotha's size shouldn't know what day New Year's is?"

"New Year's! O yes, I remember; people make visits, don't they?"

"Gentlemen; and ladies receive visits. It is the greatest day of all the year, if you have visitors enough. And I eat supper all day long. We have a supper table set, and hot oysters, and ice cream, and coffee, and cake; and I never want any dinner when it comes."

"That is a very foolish way," said her mother. "Did you bring the stockings, Rotha?"

Silently, she could not say anything "pleasantly" at the moment, Rotha delivered her package of stockings neatly put up. Mrs. Busby opened and examined, Antoinette running up to look too.

"Mamma! how ridiculously nice!" she exclaimed. "You never gave me any as good as those."

"No, I should hope not," said her mother. "Here are eleven pair, Rotha."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Were there not twelve?"

"Yes, ma'am. The other pair I have on."

"They are a great deal too thin for this time of year. Here are some thicker I have got for you. Sit down and put a pair of these on, and let me have those."

Every fibre of her nature rebelling, Rotha sat down to unbutton her boot. It was hard to keep silence, to speak "pleasantly" impossible. Tears were near. Rotha bent over her boot and prayed for help. And then the thought came, fragrant and sweet, – I am the servant of Christ; this is an opportunity to obey and please him.

And with that she was content. She put on the coarse stockings, which felt extremely uncomfortable. But then she could not get her boot on. She tugged at it in vain.

"It is no use," she said at last. "It will not go on, aunt Serena. I cannot wear my boots with these stockings."

"The boots must be too small," said Mrs. Busby. She came herself, and pushed and pinched and pulled at the boot. It would not go on.

"What do you get such tight-fitting boots for?" she said, sitting back on the floor, quite red in the face.

"They are not tight; they fit me perfectly."

"They won't go on!"

"That is the stockings."

"Nonsense! The stockings are proper; the boots are improper. What did you pay for them?"

"I did not get them."

"What did they cost, then? I suppose you know."

"Six and a half."

"I can get you for three and a half what will do perfectly," said Mrs. Busby, rising up from the floor. But she sat down, and did not fetch any boots, as Rotha half expected she would.

"What are you going to do to-morrow, Rotha?" her cousin asked.

"I don't know. What I do every day, I suppose," Rotha answered, trying to make her voice clear.

"What is Mrs. Mowbray going to do?"

"I do not know."

"I wonder if she receives? Mamma, do you fancy many people would call on Mrs. Mowbray?"

"Why not?" Rotha could not help asking.

"O, because she is a school teacher, you know. Mamma, do you think there would?"

"I dare say. Your father will go, I have no doubt."

"O, because she teaches me. And other fathers will go, I suppose. What a stupid time they will have!"

"Who?" said Rotha.

"All of you together. I am glad I'm not there."

"I shall not be there either. I shall be up stairs in my room."

"Looking at your Russia leather bag. Why didn't you bring it for us to see? But your room means three or four other people's room, don't it?"

It was on Rotha's lips to say that she had a room to herself; she shut them and did not say it. A sense of fun began to mingle with her inward anger. Here she was in her stockings, unable to get her feet into her boots.

"How am I to get home, ma'am?" she asked as demurely as she could.

"Antoinette, haven't you a pair of old boots or shoes, that Rotha could get home in?"

"What should I do when I got there? I could not wear old boots about the house. Mrs. Mowbray would not like it."

"Nettie, do you hear me?" Mrs. Busby said sharply. "Get something of yours to put on Rotha's feet."

"If she can't wear her own, she couldn't wear mine – " said Miss Nettie, unwilling to furnish positive evidence that her foot was larger than her cousin's. Her mother insisted however, and the boots were brought. They went on easily enough.

"But these would never do to walk in," objected Rotha. "My feet feel as if each one had a whole barn to itself. Look, aunt Serena. And I could not go to the parlour in them."

"I don't see but you'll have to, if you can't get your own on. You'll have worse things than that to do before you die. I wouldn't be a baby, and cry about it."

For Rotha's lips were trembling and her eyes were suddenly full. Her neat feet transformed into untidy, shovelling things like these! and her quick, clean gait to be exchanged for a boggling and clumping along as if her feet were in loose boxes. It was a token how earnest and true was Rotha's beginning obedience of service, that she stooped down and laced the boots up, without saying another word, though tears of mortification fell on the carpet. She was saying to herself, "If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men." She rose up and made her adieux, as briefly as she could.

"Are you not going to thank me?" said Mrs. Busby. A dangerous flash came from Rotha's eyes.

"For what, aunt Serena?"

"For the trouble I have taken for you, not to speak of the expense."

Rotha was silent, biting in her words, as it were.

"Why don't you speak? You can at least be civil."

"I don't know if I can," said Rotha. "It is difficult. I think my best way of being civil is to hold my tongue. I must go – Good bye, ma'am! – " and she staid for no more, but ran out and down the stairs. She paused as she passed the open parlour door, paused on the stairs, and then went on and took the trouble to go a few steps back through the hall to get the interior view more perfectly. The grate was heaped full of coals in a state of vivid glow, the red warm reflections came from, crimson carpet and polished rosewood and gilding of curtain ornaments. Antoinette's piano gave back the shimmer, and the thick rug before the hearth looked like a nest of comfort. So did the whole room. A feeling of the security and blessedness of a home came over Rotha. This was home to Antoinette. It was not home to herself, nor was any other place in all the earth. Not Mrs. Mowbray's kind house; it was kind, but it was not home; and a keen wish crept into the girl's heart. To have a home somewhere! Would the time ever be? Must she perhaps, as her aunt foretold, be a houseless wanderer, teaching in other people's homes, and having none? Rotha looked and ran away; and as her feet went painfully clumping along the streets in Antoinette's big boots, some tears of forlornness dropped on the pavement. They were hot and bitter.

But I am a servant of Christ – thought Rotha, – I am a servant of Christ; I have been fighting to obey him this afternoon, and he has helped me. He will be with me, at any rate; and he can take care of my home and give it me, if he pleases. I needn't worry. I'll just let him take care.

So with that the tears dried again, and Rotha entered Mrs. Mowbray's house more light-hearted than she had left it. She took off her wrappings, and sought Mrs. Mowbray out.

"Madame," she said, looking at her feet, "I wanted you to know, that if I do not look nice as I should, it is not my fault."

Mrs. Mowbray's eyes likewise went to the boots, and staid there. She had a little struggle with herself, not to speak what she felt.

"What is the matter, Rotha?"

"You see, Mrs. Mowbray. My boots would not go on over the thick stockings; so I have had to put on a pair of Antoinette's boots. So if I walk queerly, I want you to know I cannot help it."

"You have more stockings than that pair, I suppose?"

"Yes, ma'am; enough to last a good while."

"Let me see them."

Mrs. Mowbray examined the thick web.

"Did you and your aunt have a fight over these?"

"No, madame," said Rotha softly.

"How was it then? You put them on quietly, and without remonstrance?"

"Not exactly without remonstrance. But I didn't say much. I did not trust myself to say much. I knew I should say too much."

"What made you fear that?"

"I was so angry, ma'am."

There came some tears again, dropping from Rotha's eyes. Mrs. Mowbray drew her down with a sudden movement, into her arms, and kissed her over and over again.

"My dear," she said with a merry change of tone, "thick stockings are not the worst things in the world!"

"No, ma'am."

"You don't think so."

"No, ma'am."

"It will be a good check to your vanity, eh?"

"Am I vain, Mrs. Mowbray?"

"I don't know! most people are. Isn't it vanity, that makes you dislike to see your feet in shoes too large for them?"

"Is it?" said Rotha. "But it is right to like to look nice, Mrs. Mowbray, is it not?"

"It is right to like to see everything look nice, therefore of course oneself included."

"Then that is not vanity."

"No, – but vanity is near. It all depends on what you want to look nice for."

Rotha looked an inquiry.

"What do you want to look nice for?" Mrs. Mowbray asked smiling.

"I suppose," Rotha said slowly, "one likes to have people like one."

"And you think the question of dress has to do with that?"

"Yes, ma'am, I do."

"Well, so do I. But then —why do you want people to like you? What for?"

"One cannot help it," said Rotha, her eyes opening a little at these self-evident questions.

"Perhaps that is true. However, Rotha, there are two reasons for it and lying back of the wish; one is one's own pleasure or advantage simply. The other is – the honour and service of God."

"How, ma'am? I do not see."

"Just using dress like everything else, as – a means of influence. I knew a lady who told me that since she was a child, she had never dressed herself that she did not do it for Christ."

Rotha was silent and pondered. "Mrs. Mowbray, I think that is beautiful," she said then.

"So do I, my dear."

"But that would not make me like these boots any better."

"No," said Mrs. Mowbray laughing. "Naturally. But I think nevertheless, in the circumstances, it would be better for you to wear them, at least during some of this winter weather, than to discard them and put on others. You shall judge yourself. What would be the effect, if, being known to have plenty of shoes and stockings to cover your feet, you cast them aside, and I procured you others, better looking?"

"O you could not do that!" cried Rotha.

"If I followed my inclinations, I should do it But what would the effect be?"

Rotha considered. "I suppose, – I should be called very proud; and you, madame, very extravagant, and partial."

"Not a desirable effect."

"No, madame. O no! I must wear these things." Rotha sighed.

"Especially as we are both called Christians."

"Yes, madame. There are a good many right things that are hard to do, Mrs. Mowbray!"

"Else there would be no taking up the cross. But we ought to welcome any occasion of honouring our profession, even if it be a cross."

Rotha went away much comforted. Yet the clumsy foot gear remained a constant discomfort to her, every time she put them on and every time she felt the heavy clump they gave to her gait. Happily, she had no leisure to dwell on these things.

The holidays were ended, and the girls came trooping back from their various homes or places of pleasure. They came, as usual, somewhat disorganized by idleness and license. Study went hard, and discipline seemed unbearable; tempers were in an uncertain and irritable state. Rotha hugged herself that she had her own little corner room, in which she could be quite private and removed from all share in the dissensions and murmurings, which she knew abounded elsewhere. It was a very little room; but it held her and her books and her modest wardrobe too; and Rotha bent herself to her studies with great ardour and delight. She knew she was not popular among the girls; the very fact of her having a room to herself would almost have accounted for that; "there was no reason on earth why she should have it," as one of them said; and Mrs. Mowbray was accused of favouritism. Furthermore, Rotha was declared to be "nobody," and known to be poor; there was no advantage to be gained by being her adherent; and the world goes by advantage. Added to all which, she was distancing in her studies all the girls near her own age, and becoming known as the cleverest one in the house. No wonder Rotha had looks askance and frequently the cold shoulder. Her temperament, however, made her half unconscious of this, and when conscious, comfortably independent. She was one of those natures which live a concentrated life; loving deeply and seeking eagerly the good opinion of a few; to all the rest of the world careless and superior. She was polite and pleasant in her manners, which was easy, she was so happy; but she was hardly winning or ingratiating; too independent; and too outspoken.

The rule was that at the ringing of a bell in the morning all the girls should rise; and at the ringing of a second bell everybody should repair to the parlours for prayers and reading the Bible. The interval between the two bells was amply sufficient to allow the most fastidious dresser to make her toilette. But the hour was early; and the rousing bell an object of great detestation; also, it may be said, the half hour given to the Scriptures and prayer was a weariness if not to the flesh to the spirit, of many in the family. So it sometimes happened that one and another was behind time, and came into the parlour while the reading was going on, or after prayers were over. Mrs. Mowbray remarked upon this once or twice. Then came an outbreak; which allowed Rotha to see a new side of her friend's character, or to see it more plainly than heretofore. It was one morning a week or two after school had begun again; a cold morning in January. The gas was lit in the parlours; Mrs. Mowbray was at the table with her books; the girls seated in long lines around the rooms, each with a Bible.

"Where is Miss Bransome?" Mrs. Mowbray asked, looking along the lines of faces. "And Miss Dunstable?"

Nobody spoke.

"Miss Foster, will you have the kindness to go up to Miss Bransome and Miss Dunstable, and tell them we are waiting for them?"

The young lady went. Profound silence. Then appeared, after some delay, the missing members of the family; they came in and took their seats in silence.

"Good morning, young ladies!" said Mrs. Mowbray. "Have you slept well?"

"Quite well, madame," – one of them answered, making an expressive facial sign to her neighbours on the other side, which Rotha saw and greatly resented.

"So well that you did not hear the bell?" Mrs. Mowbray went on.

Silence.

"Answer, if you please. Did you hear the bell?"

"I did, madame," came in faint tones from one of the young ladies; and a still more smothered affirmative from the other.

"Then why were you late?"

Again silence. Profound attention in all parts of the rooms; nobody stirring.

"It has happened once or twice before. Now, young ladies, please take notice," said Mrs. Mowbray, raising her voice somewhat. "If any young lady is not in her place here at seven o'clock, I shall go up for her myself; and if I go up for her, she will have to come down with me, just as she is. I will bring you down in your nightgown, if you are not out of it before I come for you; you shall come down in your night dress, here, to the parlour. So now you know what you have to expect; and remember, I always keep my promises."

The silence was awful, Rotha thought. It was unbroken, even by a movement, until Mrs. Mowbray turned round to her book and took up the interrupted reading. Very decorously the reading went on and ended; in subdued good order the girls came to the table and eat their breakfast; but there were smouldering fires under this calm exterior; and it was to be expected that when the chance came the fire would break forth.

The chance came that same evening before tea. The girls were gathered, preparatory to that ceremony, in the warm, well lighted rooms; and as the custom was, each one had her favourite bit of ornamental work in hand. It was a small leisure time. No teacher, as it happened, was in the front parlour where Rotha sat, deep in a book; and a conversation began near her, in under tones to be sure, which she could not but hear. Several new scholars had come into the family at the New Year. One of these, a Miss Farren, made the remark that Mrs. Mowbray had "showed out" that morning.

"Didn't she!" said another girl. "O that's what she is! You'll see.

That's just what she is."

"She is an old cat!"

This last speaker was Miss Dunstable, and the spitefulness of the words brought Rotha's head up from her book, with ears pointed and sharpened.

"I thought she looked so sweet," the new comer, Miss Farren, remarked further. "I was quite taken with her at first. I thought she looked so pleasant."

"Pleasant! She's as pleasant as a mustard plaster, and as sweet as cayenne pepper. I'll tell you, Miss Farren; you're a stranger; you may as well know what you have to expect – "

"Hush, girls!"

"What's the matter?" said the Dunstable, looking round. "There's nobody near. Jewett has gone off into the other room. No, it is a work of charity to let Miss Farren into the secrets of her prison house, 'cause there are two sides to every game. Mrs. M. is a tyrannical, capricious, hypocritical, domineering, fiery old cat. O she's fiery; you have got to take care how you rise up and sit down; and she's stiff, she thinks there's only one way and that's her way; and she's unjust, she has favourites – "

"They all have favourites!" here put in another.

"She has ridiculous favourites. And she is pious, you'll be deluged with the Bible and prayers; and she's sanctimonious, you won't get leave to go to the opera or the theatre, or to do anything lively; and she's stingy, you'll learn that you must take all the potatoes you want the first time the dish is handed you, for it won't come a second time; and she's prudish, she won't let you receive visitors; and she's passionate, she'll fly out like a volcano if you give her a chance; and she's obstinate, she'll be as good – or as bad – as her word."

By this time Rotha had sprung to her feet, with ears tingling and cheeks burning, and stood there like Abdiel among the fallen angels, only indeed that is comparing great things with small She was less patient and prudent than Abdiel might have been.

"Miss Farren," she said, speaking with the calmness of intensity, "there is not one bit of truth in all that Miss Dunstable has been saying to you."

The young lady addressed looked in surprise at the new speaker. Rotha's indignant eyes were sending out angry fires. The other girls looked on too, in scorn and anger, but some awe.

"Miss Carpenter is polite!" said one.

"Her sort," said another, "What you might expect from her family."

"She is a favourite herself," cried a third. "Of course, Mrs. M. is smooth as butter to her."

"You may say what you like of me," said Rotha; "but you shall not tell a stranger all sorts of false things about Mrs. Mowbray, without my telling her that they are false."

"Don't speak so loud!" whispered a stander-by; but Sotha went on, overpowering and silencing her opponents for the moment by the moral force of her passionate utterance, —

"She is as kind as it is possible to be. She is kinder than ever you can think. She is as generous as a horn of plenty, and there is not a small thread in all her composition. She knows how to govern, and she will govern you, if you stay in her house; and she will keep her promises, as you will find to your cost if you break her laws; but she is good, and sweet, and bountiful, as a goddess of mercy. And whoever says anything else of her, you may be sure is not worthy of her Kindness; and speaks not true, but meanly, falsely, ungratefully, and mischievously!"

Rotha stood and blazed at them; and incensed and resentful as they were, the others were afraid now to say anything; for Mrs. Mowbray herself had come into the centre room, and other ears were near, which they did not wish to arouse. It passed for the time; but the next day another of her companions attacked Rotha on the subject.

"You made Miss Dunstable awfully angry at you last evening, Rotha."

"I suppose so."

"What did you do it for?"

"Because she was telling a pack of lies!" said Rotha. "I'm not going to sit by and hear anybody talk so of Mrs. Mowbray. And you ought not; and nobody ought."

"Miss Dunstable will hate you, I can tell you. She'll be your enemy after this."

"That is nothing to me."

"Yes, it's all very well to say that, but you won't think so when you come to find out. She belongs to a very rich family, and she is worth having for a friend."

"A girl like that?" cried Rotha. "A low spirited, false girl? Worth having for a friend? Not to anybody who is worth anything herself."

"But she is ever so rich."

"What's that to me? Do you think I am going to sit by and hear Mrs. Mowbray slandered, or anybody else, because the story teller has plenty of money? What is her money to me?"

"Well, I don't know," said the other deprecatingly. "It puts things in her power. Her family is one of the best in New York."

"Then the other members of it are much superior to this one! – that's all I have got to say."

"But Rotha, she can hurt you."

"How?"

"She can make the other girls treat you ill."

"I can bear as much as that for Mrs. Mowbray, I guess."

"What makes you like her so much?"

Rotha's eyes gave a wondering, very expressive, glance at her interlocutor.

"Because she is so unspeakably good, and beautiful, and generous. She is a kind of a queen!"

"She likes to rule."

"She has to rule. What sort of a place would the house be, if she did not rule?"

"But, Julia Dunstable could do you good, if she liked."

"Could she? How?" said Rotha drily.

"O she could put pleasant things in your way. She gave some of us a lovely invitation to a Christmas party; we had a royal time; and she asks the girls every now and then."

"And you would have me be a traitor for the sake of an invitation? Bell Savage, I do not want invitations from such people."

"La, Rotha, the world is full of such people; you cannot pick and choose."

"But I will. I will pick and choose those whom I honour with my friendship. And I can assure you of one thing; my family would be very much ashamed of such a one belonging to it, as the one you want me to court. I court nobody. And I will expose a lie wherever I find it, if it's my business."

I think Rotha forgot at the moment that Mrs. Busby belonged to "her family." However, Miss Savage was not wrong in supposing that her interference with Miss Dunstable would come back upon her own head. She was made to feel that a large number of the girls looked down upon her and that they refused all community with her. Even from people one does not care for, this sort of treatment is more or less painful; and it certainly made Rotha's school days less joyous in some respects than they might otherwise have been. From one reason and another, the greater proportion of her companions turned her the cold shoulder. Some for partisanship, some for subserviency, some to be in the fashion, and others again for pure envy.

For Rotha sprang forward in her learning and surpassed all who were associated with her, in their mutual studies. Her partial isolation contributed, no doubt, to this end; having little social distraction, no home outside her school walls, and no delight in the things which occupied most of the minds within them, she bent to her books; drank, and drank deep, of the "Castalian spring," and with ever increasing enjoyment. She studied, not to get and keep a high position, or to gain distinction, or to earn praise or prizes, but for pure pleasure in study and eagerness to increase knowledge and to satisfy Mrs. Mowbray. So her progress was not only rapid but thorough; what she gained she kept; and her mental growth was equal to her physical.