 | Some women's hearts |  |
BRAINS.
“YES'M!”
I turned with a start. I was quite alone, as I
thought, and the fine treble of that odd little voice
struck strangely upon my ear. I had been saying that
I was tired of life, or some such repining speech, which
I never allowed myself except in solitude, and this
object at my knee answered me, “Yes'm!” I looked
at her in amazement. She was a little morsel, scarcely
so tall as a well-grown child of seven, but with a
grave, mature, preternaturally wise face, which might
have belonged to any age from fifteen to twenty-five.
Was she goblin or mortal?
“Who are you?” I asked.
“My name is Susan Mory, ma'am, but they mostly
call me `Brains.' They say I've an old head to be on
such young shoulders.” And she laughed, a small,
fine, queer laugh, as uncanny in sound as her voice.
I was hardly yet convinced that she was human.
“How old are you?”
“Twelve, ma'am, last birthday.”
“And what do you want, `Brains'? How came you
here?”
“I want to do your errands, ma'am. I heard you
so I came in. Excuse the freedom.” And here she
bobbed me a droll little courtesy, quite in keeping with
her voice, and her laugh, and the quaint correctness
and propriety of her conversation. It was true I
wanted an errand-girl; but what could this odd morsel
of humanity do?
“What wages did you expect?” I asked, more from
curiosity to see what estimate she put upon her services
than with any serious intention of employing her.
“I heard you had been paying three dollars a week,
and the girl boarded herself. I think I could earn as
much.”
“But she was a large girl,” I said, in surprise. “She
swept and dusted my room, carried home all my work,
and shopped for linings and trimmings.”
“Yes'm.” She spoke with an acquiescent air, as if
she thought the work I had mentioned was not at all
too much for her. She seemed so ready and cheery
that I couldn't bear to refuse her.
“Can you sweep?” I asked.
“If you'll try me, ma'am, I think my work will please
you. If not, you know it's only to send me away
again.”
There was no room to dispute her assertion. I began
to like the quaint, neat little creature, with her earnest,
unchildlike face. I would question her a little more, I
thought.
“Have you a home?” I asked. “Do you live with
your parents?”
“With my mother. There are three of us, — mother,
and I, and `Body,' — I mean my sister Jane; she grew
so fast, and was so careless and thoughtless, that
father always used to call her `Body,' and me `Brains.'
When the war broke out he went for a private soldier,
but he was shot the second summer. We have eight
dollars a month, you know, — mother's pension, —
but that won't quite make us comfortable, and mother's
delicate; and so I thought if I could do your errands,
ma'am.”
So she, too, had lost by the war, — she in one way
and I in another. The thought made my heart warm
to her yet more.
“You may come to-morrow morning,” I said. “Come
at half-past six, and ask the porter for the key of
No. 10. You will find a broom in that closet behind
the door, and you can get the room swept and dusted
before the girls come to work.”
“Yes'm.”
Another droll little courtesy, and she was gone.
Then I went back to my thoughts again. They were a
little less melancholy and self-compassionate, however,
for the diversion. Yet I had lost so much. Before the
war began my father had been one of the wealthy
merchants of New York. He did a large wholesale
business, mostly with the South, and when the crisis
came it ruined him utterly. In the summer of 1861
we went to a little place in the country which belonged
to my mother, and there he died. I think it was his
trouble which brought on the long, slow fever from
his death, I had to decide upon my future. We had
scarcely a hundred dollars in the world besides the
little place which sheltered us, but which insured us
only a roof over our heads. My mother was a delicate
woman, accustomed ever since her marriage to be
petted and waited on and tended. She was utterly
broken down by her grief at the loss of my father. I
must think for both and work for both.
I, too, had been accustomed to luxury, and never
trained to any thing useful. I had received a fine-lady
sort of education. I could play and sing, — with taste
rather than with science. I danced well; I drew a
little; I read French; I could manage Italian enough
for a song; but what one thing did I know well enough
to teach it? Not one. And even if I had, there were
fifty applicants for every vacant situation in the department
of instruction. Clearly I must do something
besides teaching. I could not sew fast enough to earn
much in that way. What was I good for? My self-esteem
went rapidly down to zero, when suddenly a
new idea took possession of me. I had one endowment
which I might make available as capital, — taste in
dress. I use the words in their highest sense. I not
only knew what was pretty when I saw it, — I knew
what would be pretty before I saw it. I had original
ideas. In the days when I had been a leader of fashion
in my own set, my dresses and my trimmings had
never been servile imitations of French models. I had
always invented something for myself, often for my
fortune to any mantua-maker. It should be a fortune,
then, to me.
I matured my plan and then communicated it to my
mother. As I had foreseen, it vexed her sorely at first.
But when I set matters before her in their true light,
and she saw it afforded our only chance of comfort and
independence, she began to look on the idea more
favorably. She made only one stipulation, — that I
should not attempt to carry out my undertaking in
New York. To this I was quite ready to accede.
The supercilious patronage of all my former friends
would have been a burden quite too heavy to be borne.
I should feel more comfortable, even if I made less
money, to begin elsewhere. My scheme was quite an
ambitious one. I ignored the proverbs about small
beginnings, little acorns, and so on. I meant to storm
success at the outset. I let the house which we were
occupying for a year, and arranged to leave my mother
with the new tenants until I was ready to come for her.
Then I went to Boston.
I found vacant rooms in a building on Summer
Street, in which nearly all the upstairs apartments
were used by milliners and dress-makers. I had no
references, but I engaged to pay my rent monthly in
advance; and having paid the first month I arranged
my rooms, and put my sign — “Miss Macgregor” —
on my door, and downstairs at the lower entrance. I
had hired a dress-maker to go on with me from New
York, — one who had been in the habit of going out by
dresses. She could fit exceedingly well, but she would
have been utterly wanting in the comprehensive ability
necessary to carry on a business, and she made no pretensions
to taste about trimming. She was quite satisfied
to be hands, and let me be head, and would be
contented with her weekly wages. In one of my
rooms was a wardrobe bedstead which she and I were
to occupy together till I could send for my mother.
These arrangements made, I sent to the Transcript
an advertisement setting forth the claims to patronage
of Miss Macgregor from New York.
The evening the notice appeared I sat with it alone
in my own room, — where, until it was time to retire,
Miss Granger never intruded. The die was cast, and
now I must go forward. For the first time a sort of
passionate regret, a wild misgiving, took possession
of me, and I cried bitterly. It seemed to me I had
given up every thing I valued in life. If my social
position, my New York acquaintances, had been all, I
could have borne it without complaining; but I had
resigned much more. Two years before I had experienced
a new phase of emotion. Not to be romantic,
or put too fine a point upon the matter, I had fallen
heartily, and, I thought then, irrevocably, in love. I
felt sure, too, that Horace Weir had loved me. There
had been no engagement between us, but when he
went away in the spring of 1860 to study for three
years in the hospitals of Paris, — he was to be a
physician, — I think we had both felt sure of each
almost as confidently as if we had been betrothed.
I felt that in giving up all my old associations and
entering upon this new life I was giving him up also.
If we had been engaged, I had faith enough in him to
feel sure that he would have been changed by no
change of fortune. But, as it was, I had not the
shadow of a claim on him. We had never corresponded,
and when he came back he would not know
where to find me. I should drop out of his life.
I will confess that I suffered keenly at this prospect.
I would have clung to him if I could. For his sake I
would have clung, if I could, to position and old associations.
But the simple fact was that I could not. If
I had been willing to starve genteelly myself, I was
not willing that my mother should; and there was no
resource but to go to work. Just then I took up a
Bible lying near me, with some vague idea of finding
in it comfort or direction, and, curiously enough, my
eyes fell upon this passage: —
“And the Lord said unto Moses, Speak unto the
children of Israel that they go forward.”
I was just in the state of mind to receive these words
as a special direction, — a sort of omen. I took them
as meant for an indication that I had chosen the right
path and must walk on in it. So I tried to be brave,
— to cease to think of Horace Weir, — to suppress
every repining thought, every longing for the old days
of ease and luxury, and to content myself with the
present. I trusted that I should succeed. I felt sure
would let the old life go, and commence this new one
bravely. I had used on my sign my middle name,
Macgregor only. I trusted that if any old friends ever
chanced to read my advertisement they would not
associate Miss Macgregor, dress-maker, with Helen
Macgregor Bryce, their friend of the old time. Perhaps
this was a weakness; at any rate it harmed no
one, and Macgregor was a more imposing name than
Bryce would have been. To be imposing, to be elegant,
to become the fashion, was my only hope. I
had sold two diamond rings of considerable value for
money enough to start me fairly; but if, in the two
months to come, I could not secure a paying run of
custom, I should have lost my last chance.
The very next morning a magnificent-looking dame
walked into my room, stately after the manner of
Boston, with a certain severe majesty appropriate to
the hub of the universe. She was followed by two
pretty young ladies. I had made a distinguished toilet
that morning, and for stateliness it would go hard if I
could not match her. She bowed loftily. I bowed
loftily in response, and offered chairs.
“Miss Macgregor, I suppose.”
Bow the second on my part.
“I saw your advertisement last evening, and came to
talk with you about some dresses. Lubec has disappointed
me so many times, that if I could find some
one equally good who would be punctual, it would be a
satisfaction to make a change.”
Bow the third.
“Are you very busy, Miss Macgregor?”
“Not at all so. To-day is the first day I have been
open, and you are my first caller.”
Then followed a whispered consultation of the
mamma with the tallest young lady. I knew they
were debating whether it would be safe to trust a
stranger whose work they had never seen, whose first
patrons they were. I waited in apparent unconcern,
watching the customers go in and out of the store
opposite.
“You are sure,” the lady began, again turning back
to me, “that you would have no difficulty in fitting us
for the first time?”
“I apprehend none, madam.”
“And for trimmings, — what fashion-books do you
use?”
“None. I have them all, but I invent my own
styles for the most part.”
Upon that the youngest daughter spoke in a pleasant,
lady-like voice, —
“That will be nice, mamma. We shall not be copies
of every one else.”
“It would be better,” the elder lady remarked, “if
we could try some more common dresses first, but
there seems to be no time. Could you get two light
silks done for a wedding reception day after to-morrow?”
“Certainly, since, as I said, you have the fortune to
come first.”
“Then will you fit my daughters this morning?”
“At once.”
I led the way into the other room, where Miss
Granger sat waiting.
“White linen linings, Miss Granger,” I said, with
an air of command; “and please pin them on immediately.”
Madam started at this with a gesture of alarm.
“Do you not fit them on yourself?” she asked.
“Even Lubec always did that.”
“By no means. There is no surer way to spoil one's
power of adapting a dress to the figure. I stand at a
little distance, and see that an artistic effect is preserved.”
By this time Miss Granger was pinning on the lining
over the slight girlish form of the elder daughter. She
could fit well, and they must have perceived it. I
gave a few hints and directions, and the work was
accomplished.
“Will you leave the trimming entirely to me?” I
asked, as the mamma shook the lustrous, pearl-colored
silk out of its folds, “or have you a choice?”
“Leave it to her,” I heard the younger daughter
whisper, — “I know by her own looks she has good
taste.”
So it was settled that I should make the dresses as I
chose. No sooner had they left than I began my task.
I had only two seamstresses engaged besides Miss
Granger; but we all worked. A few other customers
came in, and I put them off until these two dresses
to Mrs. John Sturgis, Beacon Street; and I felt that if
they gave satisfaction I should have made as good a
beginning as I desired. I trimmed them so differently
that, though the silk was the same, the dresses were
totally unlike, and yet equal in elegance. I sent them
home the afternoon before the reception, and Miss
Granger was kind enough to go with them and try
them on, though that was not at all in her province.
She came back and reported elegant fits and perfect
satisfaction.
The next morning Mrs. Sturgis came for my bill.
It was a matter on which I had bestowed some
thought. I had questioned whether it would be the
best policy to conciliate custom by the moderation of
my charges, or to convey a sense of my own importance
by their extravagance. One of my girls had
formerly worked for Madame Lubec, who had stood at
the head hitherto of Boston fashion. After a consultation
with her, I had made out my bill, charging perhaps
two or three dollars on a dress more than Lubec would
have done.
Mrs. Sturgis ran over the items.
“You are a little higher in your rates than is customary
here,” she said; “but I suppose we must be
willing to pay something for your taste. My daughters'
dresses were the loveliest in the room. Can you make
them some more next week? They want some walking-dresses,
and I a dinner-dress.”
“Not next week, I am sorry to say. I am more busy
the week after next.”
I had decidedly made a hit. After that customers
came fast enough; and a good many of them spoke of
the dresses Aggie Sturgis and her sister had worn at the
wedding. I was able, in two months from that beginning,
to bring on my mother, and to take for her a
third room, — a small one which happened about that
time to fall vacant, — so that she could be as retired as
she wished. I completed this arrangement early in the
winter of 1861, and for the two years between that
time and the first appearance of little “Brains” in my
establishment, I had been prospering beyond my hopes.
But I was not happy. Success brought, indeed, a certain
kind of satisfaction; but I missed sorely the carefree
life of the old days, the liberty to follow my own
tastes and ways, and I did miss Horace Weir. I
had heard of him incidentally. He had come home
from France, and was now practising his profession in
New York. I would have given much to know
whether he had thought of me, inquired after me, tried
to trace me out. Vain enough it must have been if he
had. I had given no clue to my present residence to a
single old friend. Every one of them, to the best of
my belief, had lost sight of me. I was wedded to a life
very different from any of my early dreams. I had been
successful, it is true, beyond my expectations. I was
saving money. I could make my mother comfortable.
I had little to do with the laborious details of my
business. My task was to invent graceful fashions, —
for girls living just such lives as I used to live once.
God forgive me if sometimes I almost hated them, —
if now and then a mad rebellious impulse seized me,
and I cursed fate in my heart, forgetting that fate was
but another name for Providence.
I had been in one of these murmuring moods when
little Susan Mory interrupted my meditations with her
fine, small voice. After she went away I relapsed into
it only partially, and roused myself with determination
at last, and went to my mother, to amuse her with an
account of my droll little visitor. After all, mother had
much more to bear than I. She had not even the diversion
of business. She must sit through the long,
slow days, remembering the past and all its good gifts
and false promises, — stung by its contrast with the
empty-handed present. How much more she had lost,
too. What was the sentimental regret of a young girl
over a love that had never even been declared, to a wife's
sorrow and longing for the household tenderness which
had been hers for a quarter of a century? As I opened
her door I reproached myself for all my repinings.
I was glad to perceive that she was really interested
about “Brains.” She wanted to see her on the morrow,
and began planning about garments we could give
her to make over for herself and her sister.
The next morning, curious to see whether my small
handmaiden had arrived, I put on my dressing-gown a
little before seven, and looked into the work-room. I
opened the door so quietly that she did not hear it.
in a chair dusting the window frames. It was very
amusing to see her grave, womanly patience and care,
and her queer expedients to accomplish the tasks for
which she was too absurdly short. As she turned round
I said, —
“Good-morning, `Brains.'”
She dropped instantly from her chair, and made me
her droll little courtesy.
“Yes'm,” she said, cheerfully, “I'm come. I've been
trying to make it as clean here as usual.” And she
glanced at me interrogatively with her bright, thoughtful
eyes, that looked so large and wistful in her queer,
little, old-young face.
“Yes,” I said, “you have made it very nice; I think
you will please me.”
When her morning work was done I took her in to
see my mother, and her verdict was decidedly in the
little one's favor. “She'll be the best errand-girl you
ever had,” she said to me after “Brains” had gone back
to the work-room.
Time went on, and proved her right. Through all
the winter she was the most faithful of little maidens.
Never did pieces go astray, or bundles fail to reach their
destinations; and she developed a remarkable capacity
for matching dresses with buttons and braid, and similar
trifles. I grew really attached to her, and would
not have exchanged her for any other messenger of
twice her years.
Early in March she took a severe cold, and began to
better, and let some one else take her place; but she
insisted on coming. She knew just my ways, she said,
and she was sure it didn't hurt her. She was going to
get better of her cold as soon as there were some warm
days. Still I was not just comfortable about her. I
did not like the sound of that constant cough, — the
color on her cheeks was too bright, — she was growing,
too, into such a mere little shadow.
One morning when I entered the work-room I missed
her. Some one else had been sweeping and putting
away things, but it was not in the accustomed order.
“`Brains' didn't come. I'm afraid she's worse,” Miss
Granger said. They had all fallen into the habit of
calling her “Brains,” — the name seemed so appropriate,
— there was so much thought, and care, and womanliness
in such a little body.
Half an hour later there was a timid knock on the
door, and in came a girl whom I had never seen before.
I recognized her at once for the ten-years-old sister of
my little errand-girl, — recognized her, as one often
does, by some mysterious family likeness, which seemed
to vanish when I looked at her more steadily. This
one was a real, actual child, — large of her age, with
full, rosy cheeks, and eyes round as beads. She came
straight up to me, and delivered her message with the
air of one who had been taught it carefully.
“Sister Susy is sick, and can't come. She is sorry,
and hopes it won't put you to much inconvenience.”
It was just like “Brains,” — the polite, careful message.
“And you are `Body'?” I asked.
“Yes, ma'am,” — and she looked as if she longed to
ask how I had learned her home name, — “Yes, ma'am;
I am Jane, and they call me `Body.'”
“Is Susy very sick?”
“Pretty bad, I guess, ma'am. She can't sit up, and
she coughs most all the time, and mother sent me after
a doctor this morning.”
I asked where they lived, and she mentioned a number
on Pleasant Street.
“Well,” I said, “tell Susy not to worry. I shall get
along nicely, and I will come to see her as soon as I can
make time, — to-night, if not before.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
She went away then. She had a lazy sort of voice,
and spoke lingeringly, — quite unlike the quick, characteristic
utterance of little “Brains.” How well I remembered
that first day, and the brisk “Yes'm” that broke
in upon my musings.
It was late in the afternoon before I could make time
to go to Pleasant Street. I found the Morys living in
the third story of a comfortable-looking house. I went
first into a room which seemed to serve as a kitchen
and sitting-room. Mrs. Mory, a tired-looking woman
who had been pretty once, was stirring something in a
saucepan over the fire. She turned to greet me, and
invited me to go into the next room, where Susy was.
It was a small bedroom, but every thing was neat and
burning on her cheeks, her eyes glittering, and her poor
little body shaken by a paroxysm of coughing. As soon
as she could speak she put out her hand.
“Thank you, Miss Macgregor; it was very kind of
you to come. I didn't mean to give up this way, and
disappoint you. And I suppose you will have to get
some one else. I thought first that perhaps `Body' could
do my work for a week or two, until I got better; but
I don't suppose she'd answer.”
“No, I fear she wouldn't; and besides, while you are
ill, your mother will need her at home. But I'll keep
the place for you. I shall have to get some one else, to
be sure, but I'll get them with the understanding that
you are to come back just as soon as you are able, and
they must be ready to give up to you at any time.”
“Oh, how good, how good you are!” the poor little
morsel cried, with kindling eyes. “I was so afraid I
should lose my place that it was worse than the sickness.”
Her gratitude touched me profoundly, for it seemed
to me, even then, that she would never get any better;
and it was so hard to think of that poor little patient
life going out so early, quenched in its dawn.
It brought on her cough to talk, so I did not stay
with her long. On the way out I said to her
mother, —
“Do not be troubled by any fear of want. I shall
pay Susy her wages just the same as if she were well.
I can well afford it, for I am prospering in my business,
you must let me know.”
As I went out of the house I caught a faint red glow
of the March sunset, shooting up high enough to show
a glimpse of its splendor even to the dwellers in brick
walls. Would little “Brains” see many more days decline?
I longed to take her away into the country,
and give her, before she died, one glimpse of wide-stretching
fields, of sunsets, and sunrisings. But it was
too late. She was not well enough to be moved, and
if she should never get any better she would see a light
before long such as no sun ever kindled, breathe airs of
healing, smell flowers that grow not on any earthly soil.
Her “country” would be brighter than any of her
dreams, — the land that lies “very far off.”
The next day I went to see her again. I had not
thought of going so soon, but a spell seemed to draw
me. It was reward enough to see her poor little face
brighten, and her eyes grow eager with welcome when
I went in. But she was no better. She never would
be, I thought. I asked her mother what the doctor
said, and she answered me, with a burst of sobbing, —
“I don't think he has much hope of her. He says
her lungs are very much inflamed. He thinks it might
have been better if she had staid at home when she first
got her cold, but I couldn't keep her. She was such
an ambitious child. Oh, ma'am, if God takes her, how
shall I bear it? Since her father left me, little as she
is, she's been what I depended on.”
I could well understand it. The girl had one of
She was thoroughly reliable, with a courage, a patient
hope, a quiet strength, utterly out of proportion to her
tiny frame. I could not say any thing to console her
poor mother, for I knew too well what she was losing,
and it seems so idle to talk about heavenly consolations
to ears deaf with misery. The soul is so seldom ready
to accept them until after the blow has fallen, and God
himself speaks to the stricken one through the darkness
of desolation. I could only say, —
“We need not quite give up hope yet, and we ought
to think of her now, — of making her as comfortable as
we can.”
Then I went out again into the March twilight.
Every night after that found me at Pleasant Street,
I could not stay away. Besides all my interest in her,
an unaccountable impression took possession of me that
she was in some wise associated with my own fate. I
was going, so it seemed to me, straight toward my destiny,
— a destiny in some dim, undreamed-of way connected
with “Brains” and her little room.
I have said that from the first I had not much hope
of her. My hope lessened every day. She would
never come back to the place I had engaged another to
fill till she got well. I should never watch again her
tidy little ways, or be amused at her quaint womanliness.
I had not thought it was in me to care for her
so much, but my heart grew heavy as I saw her fading
away. She suffered terribly with her racking cough, and
the constant wearing pain in her side and chest; but
time, too, she continued to make light of her illness
and tell me that in a little while she should be back
doing my errands as of old.
The first time she said any thing else was one April
night. I went to her a little later than usual, and
found the doctor with her. I had never seen him
before, this Dr. John Sargent. His name seemed somehow
strangely familiar, though I could not recall at
the moment where I had heard it. He was bending
over poor little “Brains” when I went in, but he raised
his head and met my eyes with his own, so kind, so
pitiful, so serious, that I felt drawn toward him at
once. The child put out her hand.
“You'll have to keep her, Miss Macgregor,” she said,
with a sad smile.
I did not think at first who she meant, and I asked
her.
“The girl that took my place, you know. I've been
asking Dr. Sargent, and he doesn't think I'll ever be
able to go back any more.”
She was so calm that for very shame I tried to be
calm also, but the tears would come, and I went out
into the next room without speaking. Soon Dr. Sargent
joined me.
“It is very sad,” he said. “I have seldom been so
much interested in a case. Such a bright, patient little
thing as she is, and so wonderfully womanly. She
asked me herself, to-night, if there was any hope, and
I had to tell her. You see how she bears it.”
After he had gone I went back to little Susy. I had
brought her a bunch of violets, which I saw in a shop-window
as I came along, and her very pleasure in
them made my heart ache. How she loved all beautiful
things. How much she was capable of enjoying, and
how little she had had to enjoy in this world, poor
child. And now she was going.
I think she guessed my thought, for she touched my
hand with a timid, caressing motion, and said, very
softly, —
“There will be brighter flowers there, Miss Macgregor.
`It hath not entered into the heart of man to
conceive,' you know. It is well for me; only it will be
so hard for mother and Jane. But their Father will
take care of them. You know what it says about the
widow and the fatherless.”
How unconsciously she reproved my lack of faith.
I bent over her, and pressed my lips to the little cheek
where the hectic burned. How many times I had
doubted God, and what faith she had. She seemed to
infuse into my soul new strength. As I went through
the other room to go home I found Mrs. Mory crying
very softly, so as not to disturb her sick child, in a
quiet, dreary way, inexpressibly pitiful. Poor “Body”
was kneeling with her face buried in her mother's lap,
fairly shaken by the violence of her suppressed sobbing.
I only said, as I went by, —
“Don't grieve her by weeping. She has been
telling me that God will take care of you.”
When I reached home I sat down and tried to think
me back to Horace Weir. John Sargent was his
friend, I remembered, — a classmate, and the fidus
Achates of his early manhood. Did they occupy such
a relation still, I wondered. Would I be mentioned
between them? But no, Dr. Sargent knew of me
only as Miss Macgregor, the fashionable dress-maker
for whom little “Brains” had worked. He would never
associate me with Helen Bryce, even if Weir had once
made that name familiar to him. What was there
to arouse such tumult of hope and memory in my
heart? I remembered little Susy, and the world where
she was going, and tried to grow calm.
For a fortnight after that she failed fast. Of course I
went to see her every day, and it carried me strangely
near to the eternal world whither her footsteps tended.
You cannot think what a change it seemed to come
back to the thoroughly earthly atmosphere of my
fashionable establishment, — to see the bright-hued
silks, and laces white and dainty as hoar-frost, — to
hear the perpetual talk about what was stylish and
what was becoming, and be complimented about my
invention, my charming taste. It was like turning
back to earth from the gate of Heaven.
At length there came a day — it was toward the
last of April — when I went earlier than usual to see
little “Brains.” She had been so weak the day before
that I felt anxious. I carried her the first May flowers
I had seen. The little creature had a sort of passionate
fondness for flowers not unusual in such an organization.
of her own kindred.
When I went in I saw Dr. Sargent was in the room,
and with him, his back toward the door, another gentleman.
The doctor heard my footsteps, and came out.
“A friend of mine is there,” he said; “Dr. Weir,
from New York. He came on to visit me, and I
brought him to see the child. There is no hope, of
course; but he might think of something to relieve her
that I did not.”
I felt my face turning crimson under his searching
glance. But neither he nor I made any comment. As
soon as I felt sufficiently mistress of myself I went
into the room. Calmness stole like balm over my
spirit as I crossed its threshold. I felt as if I were in
the presence of waiting angels. I met Horace Weir's
eyes, but I scarcely knew it as I went up to Susy, and
saw the strange, seraphic light which made her little
wan face seem as the face of an angel. I gave her the
flowers, and she took them and my hand together into
her clinging hold.
“Dear, kind Miss Macgregor,” she said, fondly; “you
won't have to bring me any more flowers. I am going
where they blow all the time. What should I have
done without you? How thankful I am that I went to
your shop.”
“But if you hadn't come there, perhaps you would
have lived,” I said, as well as I could for the sobs which
were choking me. She thought a moment, then she
shook her head.
“No, I should not have outlived God's time; and
you have made me so much happier. If I can pray for
any thing after I die, I shall ask Him, when I get to
His feet, to bless you for evermore. Can you stay with
me a little while?”
I took off my shawl and bonnet, and sat down at her
bedside. Dr. Sargent came up to bid her good-night.
“I must go now,” he said; “but I will come very
early in the morning. Will you stay a while, Weir, in
case any thing should be wanted?”
“Certainly,” answered a voice, every tone of which I
knew well.
Little “Brains” looked up with such a bright smile, —
“How kind every one is,” she said. “How kind
you've always been, Dr. Sargent. Good-by.”
Moved by some sudden impulse of tenderness, Dr.
Sargent bent over and kissed the little wistful face of
the child he had tended so long and patiently. Next
time he sees her it will be after he too has gone over
the river. He will not be sorry then that he “did
it unto one of the least of these,” Christ's little ones.
Weir sat down in the outer room. I stayed by Susy.
Her mother came in and out restlessly, with white face,
and eyes full of anguish and longing. “Body” had cried
herself into a state of exhaustion, and she sat on the
floor, her head in a chair, sleeping heavily. Shall I
ever forget the glimpse I had that night into the heart
of that dying child? Holding that little hand, looking
into those eyes so full of meaning, and so soon to close
for ever, I drew nearer than I ever had before to the
think, when a sudden light illumined all her face, and,
as if in answer to a call we did not hear, she said, —
“I am ready.”
Her mother clung to her in a passion of tears and
prayers. Her sister, wide awake now, was sobbing at
her side. She kissed them both fondly.
“God loves you,” she said.
Then she looked at me with wistful eyes. I bent
down and kissed her, my tears falling fast on her white
face.
“God loves you, too,” she said; and then a moment
after, she spoke again, as if that voice we could not
hear were once more calling, —
“All ready.”
Then she turned her face, with that last smile on it,
to the wall, and went home.
An hour afterward she lay, as we had robed her, in
white garments, with shut eyes, and a look so calm and
sweet upon her face you would have thought her sleeping.
I had to go then. I knew my mother was
waiting for me anxiously.
“May God comfort you,” I said, going up to Mrs.
Mory to bid her good-night. She did not turn her
eyes away from the dead face on the pillows.
“Yes,” she answered dreamily, “she said God loved
us.”
As I went down the stairs Weir followed me. When
we were in the street he drew my hand through his
arm, and spoke to me for the first time.
“Helen, that dead child has given us to each other.
But for her should I ever have found you? Sargent
knew how vain all my inquiries for you, since I came
back, had been. He had seen a photograph of you
which I carried — perhaps you have forgotten it —
across the sea with me. He felt pretty sure that he
recognized you from it the first time he saw you; and
he knew, besides, that Macgregor was your middle
name. So last week he wrote to me, and I came on to
find you out.”
We buried poor little “Brains,” two days after that,
in the cemetery at Forest Hills, under the shadow of a
great rock. You will see her tombstone if you go
there, — a little white cross, on which there is no word
save “Susy.”
We left her there on the last day of April, under a
sunshine bright as June. We put white flowers round
the little white face, and into the hands that would
never be tired any more. And on the sod piled above
her grave we left sweet blossoms to lie there and give
forth their sweetness, and then die as she had died.
It was not long after that before I gave up my
business to a successor and married Dr. Weir. We
have enjoyed since then a happiness that sometimes
seems to me too blessed to last. But we try to sanctify
it by making ourselves ministers of God's bounty to
His children. What we do for Mrs. Mory and Jane is
no charity, for we consider them a bequest from little
“Brains,” at whose bedside we found each other
anew.
| Some women's hearts | |