In the Way (12 page)

             
The Brower boys went out from the church feeling uncomfortable, they hardly knew why. The sermon had made them feel so. They were too dull to understand the reason and too wicked to heed what had been spoken to them. Perhaps though, the seed fell not all on stony ground in their hearts. But they said on the way home that they did not like the new minister, and what was more, they never would like him.

             
The benediction was pronounced and David Benedict was just about to step out into the aisle when the minister placed a detaining hand upon his shoulder.

             
“One minute, Benedict; I want your sister to teach a class in the Sunday-school and I want you and your brother for my Bible class. Your brother half promised me that he would stay. It won't hinder you to remain, will it? I really need your sister for a teacher very badly.”

             
David gave his consent at once, amazed beyond expression. Joseph had promised to attend Sunday-school! By what power had the minister abstracted that promise, and when had he met Joseph? The millennium must surely be about to dawn. He would not put one hindering stone in the way of either Joseph or his sister. So, although he shrank from going into a class, and tried to get away on pretext of looking after the horses, the minister laughingly held on to him and he went over to the corner and sat down with the Bible class, to the amazement of Deacon Chatterton and the gratification of Deacon Meakins. And there sat Joseph! David could not get over it. The brothers wisely refrained from looking at one another, but sat in their places as if they had been accustomed to coming to Sunday-school from time immemorial. Truth to tell, Joseph had not intended to stay at all, but some strange power in that winning smile of the minister forced him against his will. Besides, Ruth seemed anxious to remain.

             
The minister escorted her down the aisle to the corner where sat a row of giggling girls, and placed her in front of the delighted and wholly devoted Ellen Amelia. As he went down the aisle he said in a low tone to his new teacher: “You are just the one for that class I am sure. There is one girl who needs you—and probably more—but I am interested in her. She is Deacon Haskins' daughter. You will know her. She is the one who looks as if she had tried to and couldn't.”

             
“And am I supposed to help her try to and can?” asked Ruth, laughing.

             
“Well, I had not put it that way; I had supposed the proper thing would be to teach her not to try what she cannot accomplish, but perhaps it would be better to show her how to attain to the height of her ambitions. Then he left her before those girls who were every one of them ready to adore her at once; if they ever got quite over being a little afraid of her. As soon as the first awe of having the velvet hat in their immediate midst had disappeared somewhat, they began to sing very loud and look proudly over at the other classes of girls who had not a new, stylish teacher from the city. And so is Christ's work mingled with the wickedness of this world and the petty sins of the human heart.

“SHE was real solemn part of the time,” said Ellen Amelia as she passed her plate for some more cabbage. “I wouldn't have thought she was that kind. She ain't quite like any girls I ever read of either, for she don't seem proud one bit, though she does wear such lovely clothes. She had the cutest little pin on her collar, a wreath of green leaves with a little pearl between each one. If I had a pin like that I'd be just too happy to live. And she had a beautiful ring on. I saw it when she took off her glove to write in our class book.”

              “I'm sure I don't know why you shouldn't be proud, if you want to, without any pin or ring. You've just as good a right to as she. Your father makes more money than hers ever did, and because he ain't such a fool as to let you spend it on gewgaws isn't any reason why you shouldn't be proud of him, if you want to.”

             
It was practical, anxious little Mrs. Haskins who said this. But Ellen Amelia did not get her admiration for the romantic from her mother's side of the family. Her mother strongly disapproved of the "Fireside Companion," on the ground that Ellen Amelia might be better employed in darning stockings for the younger Haskinses than in dreaming over its columns. She never read it herself and therefore had no moral grounds of objection. But Deacon Haskins was weak and yielding where his daughter was concerned and quietly subscribed for it in response to her earnest pleadings.

             
“Well, I know one thing,” went on Ellen Amelia, with her mouth full of cabbage, “I mean to cut over my brown basque and fix a little jacket to it like hers, and make a front out of that blue and green silk handkerchief Uncle Timothy sent me from New York. I just know could do it.”

             
“No, you are not!” interjected her mother sharply. “Your brown basque is good enough as it is, and I won't have you wasting your time chopping up good things to make an outlandish copy of a girl you never saw before. If that's the kind of thing you learn in Sunday-school you better stay at home.”               Probably the young teacher, who was at that moment kneeling beside her bed and praying that the words she had spoken to those girls that morning might not all have been in vain, would have agreed with the mother could she have listened. But though dress and romance were uppermost in Ellen Amelia's mind, there was an under-current of something earnest, some longing she had never felt before, which, strange to say, found its outlet in a desire to dress like her new idol. Miss Benedict was lovely. Why could not she be lovely if she could make herself look like that? She had something higher in her soul that Ellen Amelia had understood, and Ellen Amelia had resolved to have it too if possible. The only way to get it was to try to be like the girl who possessed it. The only way to be like her was to begin with her dress. Ellen Amelia meant well, and would come out right in the end.

             
She stood at the window of the front room of her father's house one afternoon of that week digging a pin diligently into the window sash and winking back the tears. She and her mother had just been having a rather angry talk about the brown basque. Ellen Amelia was determined to have the little jacket fronts put on in the way Miss Benedict's had been. She had coaxed and reasoned all in vain. Mrs. Haskins was firm. The brown basque should not be cut up nor its fashion altered in any way. Ellen Amelia hated it. It did not fit her. Its plain darts were too flat and the point at the waist in front stuck out. It was a great trial to her. She had resolved to model herself after this lovely stranger, in short to be such a pattern of loveliness in every respect that her mother should be astonished at her. It need not be thought that Ellen Amelia had not recognized the higher something which Ruth Benedict possessed, for she did and longed to possess it herself; but how was she to do so if she could not even attain the outward similitude? The trouble with Ellen Amelia was that she began at the outward instead of the inward to model her likeness. But after all, was she much to blame? She understood better the outward, and who shall say God did not mean the outward adorning sometimes to be the key to the inner one. It is true it might have turned out otherwise had not Ruth's taste in dress been quiet, modest, self-respecting, and lovely. There was nothing of flash or showiness about Ruth Benedict.

             
Ellen Amelia looked out on the bright autumn world and thought it a dark one. How was she to improve herself and do any of the great things her heroines of the weekly story papers always succeeded in doing in the world, if her mother would persist in throwing hindrances in her path? She sighed discontentedly and wished she could ever have anything she wanted. If only she might have a new dress and make it the way she wanted to! But no, of course her mother would insist on cutting it out in her own way, even if she did have one.

             
Just then her meditations were interrupted by the wild gesticulations of her little brother Amos, who was waving a large paper package which proved to be an express package, and addressed to her. Ellen Amelia's heart fluttered and she thought of all the possibilities of princes in disguise who might have seen her in some impossible way and fallen in love with her at first sight, found out who she was in an equally improbable way, and sent her some rare gift. Ellen Amelia was always getting up some such sudden picture of ravishing delight for herself only to have it dashed in hard practical bits at her feet by the stern facts of the case. Yet in spite of repeated disappointments and dashing of hopes, her buoyant imagination was always ready for a new possibility of wonder which should “robe her in gown of the finest texture and deck her with jewels so fair.” Really there were possibilities of great good or evil in Ellen Amelia, and if some prince of darkness in disguise had happened to appear about this time in her path it would have been worse for her. She was in great danger. But there was a Wiser than her mother and father watching over her. Even now some good was coming to her through a common express package sent by her Uncle Timothy in New York. He was a policeman there and well to do. He had no children of his own, and remembered well how he used to romp with and care for little tow-headed Ellen Amelia when she was but five years old and he a clerk in his brother's hardware store. At long intervals, with no seeming reason like a birthday or Christmas as an excuse, he sent Ellen Amelia something. There had been but two of these gifts before this one. The first had been a gold dollar, and the second the aforementioned blue and green silk handkerchief.

             
Great excitement prevailed in the Haskins family while the package was being opened, and Ellen Amelia felt her importance. Mother Haskins came with her dish towel over her arm and a teacup she was wiping in her hand. Grandmother Haskins came with a button between her lips and little Tommie Haskins' red flannel “Johnny cloths” she was mending in her hand, while young Amos and Tommie hung over the paper and gloated over each difficult knot in the heavy twine in a transport of delight. If you could not have express packages addressed to yourself, why then surely it was the next best thing to have your sister get one.

             
The papers fully unwrapped, disclosed to view soft rich folds of dark blue serge material, a good full dress pattern of it. Uncle Timothy certainly had good taste, or else had asked the advice of the dress-goods clerk. Certainly he could not have selected anything that would have brought out better the uncertain complexion of Ellen Amelia, who would have liked to be beautiful, but alas! knew not how to make the best of what she had.

             
After the first excitement was over, Ellen Amelia sat down to enjoy her present by herself. There was a shadow over her joy even so early. Her mother had said with grim satisfaction, “That'll save buyin' you anythin' new this winter, thank fortune! We must get at makin' it as soon's the boys' flannels is out of the way,” and she had gone back to her labors in the kitchen, rejoicing truly that her daughter would have such a beautiful dress, planning the while to cut it by a pattern which fitted herself, as Ellen Amelia was growing so large now.

             
But the daughter took the beautiful goods up to her room and sat down to think. She had visions of the dress as it would look if it were made by her mother,—as her dresses had always been made,—with her own assistance, of course; and she also had another vision of the dress as it would appear if it were modeled after Miss Benedict's. Oh, if she could but attain to a city dressmaker! But, of course; that was out of the question. She had but three dollars and twenty-five cents of her own, and she did not feel like asking her father for more for that purpose. Money was not plentiful in the Haskins family. Ellen Amelia sighed again. A dressmaker was out of the question, and even if she were not she would have to be Miss Dunnet, the Summerton dressmaker, from West Winterton, and Ellen Amelia's soul had aspirations beyond Miss Dunnet. She had secretly compared the hang of Georgiana Brummel's skirt with the graceful sweep of Ruth Benedict's last Sunday, and she longed inexpressibly to be enfolded in such long, graceful folds as Miss Benedict was able to compass. Ellen Amelia was a girl of determination, and when she could not do a thing one way she generally managed to do it another. It was perhaps for this reason that she had impressed the minister as one who “tried to and couldn't.” Only he did not know. She tried and accomplished, but by so hard and circuitous a route that the result was utterly different from what she had planned. But this time she determined to do a rather daring thing. She would go to Miss Benedict and see if she could borrow a skirt pattern. She had a secret fear that her errand might all be in vain, and that city ladies did not usually even know that their dresses required a pattern, but she could but fail if she tried. So, making an excuse of some trifling errand, she started out, not without much fear and trembling.

             
Once on her way, she began to almost repent her hasty action. What would the elegant young city lady think of her, asking for a skirt pattern? Ellen Amelia had walked about a mile and was nearing the border of the Benedict farm, when she determined firmly that she would say nothing whatever about the skirt pattern. Indeed, as she came in sight of the house she began to think maybe it would be better not to go in at all, but to go on up to the Barnes' house and do that errand for her father she had promised to do some time. It would look presuming in her to call on Miss Benedict. To be sure Ruth had kindly invited all her class to come and see her, saying she was lonely and wanted to get acquainted, but Ellen Amelia could scarcely conceive of that being exactly true. How could she be lonely and want common village companionship when she occupied so novel a position, mistress of a grand home, full of beautiful things, and two newly made brothers to worship her—for that Joseph and David thought a great deal of their sister, she had fully decided, during her brief view of their faces on Sunday.

             
When she reached the gate she paused, half turned to go in, and then quickly looking sidewise at the windows turned and went rapidly on, a few steps. It was a very hard thing, however, to come so near this dream of paradise and not go in. Ellen Amelia looked back again, and saw, oh wonder of wonders, a window thrown up, and a white hand with a dainty handkerchief waving at her, and a voice calling, “Miss Haskins.”

             
It had really never struck Ellen Amelia in the grown-up sense before, that she was Miss Haskins. It sounded so dignified and far-away. She expected to be Ellen Amelia to the ends of her days, unless indeed the wonderful prince came. She had sometimes thought that he might call her “Miss Ellen,” or “Miss Alene,” or “Miss Amelie,” as she variously designated herself after reading some of her favorite serials.

             
But to be called “Miss Haskins” by another girl, and such a girl, putting her on a level with herself, and speaking the words with such a sweet friendly tone, Ellen Amelia could scarcely believe her ears. She stopped, of course, and obeyed the summons, and was almost overpowered by the splendor and comfort of the room into which she was ushered, which proved to be the library.

             
Ruth had been praying for this scholar of hers ever since Sunday. She had been asking her Heavenly Father to give her some opportunity of helping her, if it was his will. Therefore she did not feel that it was all chance that she should look up from her writing desk by her upper window and see the figure of the girl for whom she had been praying. There was something about Ellen Amelia that was unmistakable even at a distance, if one had once noticed her carefully. Perhaps it was the “tried-to-and-couldn't-ness” of her. At least Ruth felt sure her opportunity was coming, and when, as she watched, she saw that the girl wanted to come in and hesitated, she helped on the opportunity by opening her window and calling to her.

             
“I am so glad you were passing,” began Ruth when she had seated her bewildered visitor and insisted on removing her wraps, for the day was a cold one. “I was just hoping some one would come, for I am alone this afternoon.” She was very winning and pleasant and she seemed to know exactly how to take away the embarrassment from her visitor. Some fine instinct, or perhaps some higher spiritual guidance, told her that her guest would be more at her ease if she could once have the opportunity to look about the room, and so Ruth made an excuse to leave her alone in that wonderful room for full five minutes on plea of giving a direction to Sally, and when she came back Ellen Amelia, as she had hoped, had regained some of her abundant spirit, and was able to talk. Indeed she even lost her embarrassment so much as to become quite confidential and to admire her hostess.