A Princess in Calico

‘Dear child, are you satisfied?’

‘With what, my lady?’

‘With Christ, and the life He has planned for you?’

She hesitated. If it had been this other life that she had been planning for herself only the day before, how gladly she would have answered: but, if it should be Sleepy Hollow, could she say yes?

With her keen intuition, which had been sharpened by pain, Tryphosa divined her thought.

‘I am going to give you a new beatitude,’ she said, brightly. ‘Blessed be drudgery, for it is the grey angel of success.’

‘That is a hard gospel, my lady.’

‘Perhaps, but ease and victory are for ever incompatible. The Father loved the Son, yet He surrendered Him to a life of toil, and Christ Himself gave His chosen ones the heritage of tribulation, crowned with the sweet, bright gift of peace. It is the tried lives that ring the truest. The idea runs all through the Bible. “Silver purified seven times,” and “gold tried in the fire,” and “polished after the similitude of a palace.” Have you ever thought of the friction that involves? The finest diamonds bear the most cutting, and it is the mission of the diamond to reflect the light. If we would have our lives a success, we must seek not happiness but harmony.’

‘Harmony! With what, my lady?’

‘The will of God, dear child. We are out of tune when God finds us. He puts us in tune with our great keynote Jesus, and then we are like an Æolian harp. The west and the east winds make music through it, and the shrieking storm the sweetest music of all. But remember, little one, it is the “joy of the Lord” which is our strength. We must sit in the sunshine if we would reflect the rainbow.’

That night Pauline spent upon her knees.

‘It is ridiculous,’ exclaimed Mr Davis, when, the next morning, she announced her decision to the family. ‘I will send a nurse down by the early train, but it is not fit work for you, my child, and besides we cannot spare you.’

Her eyes filled.

‘It is so good of you to say that! But my Father has called me, and I must go.’

‘He does not say anything about your going in the letter,’ said Mr Davis, as he ran his eyes over the words.

‘I mean my heavenly Father, Uncle Robert.’ she said simply. ‘The message came last night.’

After that they could not shake her, although Belle hung about her tearfully. Russell and Gwen protested, Aunt Rutha looked at her with sorrowful eyes, and Mr Davis repeated that the very idea was absurd, as he paced up and down with a strange huskiness in his throat.

‘I have come to say good-bye, my lady.’

Tryphosa looked wistfully at the brave, sweet face, which she knew she would see no more.

‘So soon, dear child?’

‘I have given Christ the key, as you said, and now I am under orders.’

‘Well, I knew it would come. It is only that we must travel by different roads. We shall meet at the end of the journey.’

‘But you never told me that my way to the kingdom lay through Sleepy Hollow!’

‘Surely not, dear child! It is not for me to do the work of the Holy Spirit. I knew you would hear His voice speaking to you from out the shadows by-and-by.’

Pauline sighed.

‘I have so longed for culture, my lady, and now I must put it by.’

‘I am going to quote again. “Blessed be drudgery, the secret of all culture.” Some one has said: “Latin and Greek, and music and art, and travel, are the decorations of life, but industry and perseverance, courage before difficulties, and cheer under straining burdens, self-control and self-denial are the indispensables. It is our daily task that mainly educates us, and the humblest woman may live splendidly.” And remember, dear child, a life like Christ’s is the grandest thing in the world. Angels may well envy us the opportunity of living it, for God Himself has lived it in Christ and rejoices to live it again in each of us. We should glory in the thought that our King allows us to be the mirror in which the world may see Jesus. May the Lord keep you as one of His “hidden ones,” my darling, and make you to realise that He who “holdeth the height of the hills,” spreads the hush of His presence over the valleys.’

Then she drew her close in a long, last farewell.

Chapter VIII

Idealising the Real

‘If you cannot realise your Ideal, you can at least idealise your Real.’

As the train slackened speed, Pauline lifted her eyes from the book which Richard Everidge had laid on the seat beside her, after giving her that last strong handshake, to see her father standing in front of the Sleepy Hollow Station. A great pity filled her heart – how worn and old he looked!

They had all wanted to accompany her part of the way, and Belle had pleaded to be allowed to go and help nurse, but she had said them nay. She knew the accommodations of Hickory Farm, and it was easier to leave them where she had met them first, at the entrance of what would always be to her the city of delights.

Abraham Lincoln and the spring waggon! Had the whole beautiful summer been one delicious dream? Could it be only a week since she had stood entranced in that forest of flame? Here the leaves hung brown and shrivelled on the denuded branches, stray flakes of snow were in the air, and the early twilight fell chill and dreary.

‘I’m terrible glad to see you, Pauline, though I hated to spoil your visit,’ said Mr Harding, as he gave Abraham Lincoln a taste of the whip.

Pauline leaned towards him, and laid both hands upon his arm.

‘Poor father! I am so sorry for you! Now tell me all about it.’

And the tired man turned to the daughter who for his sake had left ease and beauty and friends, and shifted to her shoulders the burden which he found too heavy for his own.

The children crowded to meet her as she stumbled through the narrow hall-way into the kitchen. How dark it was! Her quick glance comprehended the whole scene, and the contrast between it and that other home-coming smote her with a keen sense of physical pain. She looked at the solitary lamp with its grotesquely hideous ornament of red flannel, at Susan’s expressionless, freckled face, at the boys in their copper-toed boots and overalls, at the good-natured, but hopelessly common-place Martha Spriggs, with her thin hair drawn tight into a knob the size of a bullet, and her bare arms akimbo. ‘Idealize her real!’ Would it be possible to idealize anything at Sleepy Hollow?

She got her welcome in various fashions.

‘It’s about time you were getting back!’ exclaimed Mrs Harding from the bed on which she was forced to lie, in bitterness of spirit, with Polly by her side. ‘I suppose nothing less than a stroke would have brought you. It beats me how people can be such sponges! I’m thankful I was never one to go trailin’ about the country after my relations. I never was away from home more than a day in my life till I was married, and it’s been nothing but work ever since, and now to be laid here like a useless log, with everything going hotfoot to destruction! It’s a good thing you’ve come at last, for the children are makin’ sawdust and splinters of every bit of crockery in the house, and that Martha Spriggs has no more management than a settin’ hen. I don’t suppose you’ll be much better, though. You never did hev much of a head, an’ now you’ve been up among the clouds so long, you’ll be more like to sugar the butter and salt the pies than before.’

Pauline lifted Polly from her uncomfortable position with a warm glow about her heart, which all the sick woman’s bitterness was powerless to quench. If she could see Richard Everidge, she would tell him that she did believe in altitudes now. It was possible even in the valleys to live above the clouds. ‘Do not seek happiness,’ Tryphosa had said, ‘but harmony with God’s will,’ and God’s will for her was Sleepy Hollow. ‘It is not what we do, but what we are, dear child,’ she seemed to hear her saying. She remembered reading that ‘the smallest roadside pool has its water from heaven, and its gleam from the sun, and can hold the stars in its bosom, as well as the great ocean.’ God could make a ‘perfect Christian’ even in Sleepy Hollow.

‘I’m powerful glad ye’ve cum, Pawliney,’ said Martha Spriggs, as she followed her into the dairy after the meal was over. ‘I’m that beset I dunno where I’m standin’, for Miss Hardin’s been as crooked as a snake fence, an’ as contrairy as a yearlin’ colt, an’ the childern dew train awful.’

‘Yer’ve got to tell me stories all night, miles of ‘em,’ said Lemuel, as he bestowed his small person on the floor, with his legs in the air.

‘No, no, Lemuel, you’re going right to bed, like a good little brother, so Polly can get to sleep. Poor Polly is so tired,’ and Pauline walked up and down the floor of her tiny room trying to soothe the weary child.

‘Hi! Poll’s no ‘count; she’s only a gurl. I ain’t goin’ ter sleep nuther. I’m goin’ ter stay up fer hours an’ hours, an’ if yer don’t keep right on tellin’ stories quick, I’ll holler, an’ that’ll make mar mad, an’ then she’ll send par up with a stick ter beat me. I don’t care, he don’t hit ez hard as she duz, anyhow.’

‘If you’ll get undressed right away, Lemuel, I’ll tell you about a little boy who lived with an’ old, old man, and one night he couldn’t sleep, but – ’

‘Huh! that’s a Bible story. This ain’t Sunday. Par never reads the Bible ’cept Sunday. I want ‘em ‘bout lions an’ tigers, an’ men tumblin’ down mountains, and boys gettin’ eaten by bears.’

‘What did you do when I was away, Lemuel?’

His lower lip protruded ominously.