Electa

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I. Inside Of Heeself

“Are Indians good?”

Electa did not hear, or if she heard, she did not listen.

Indians good?”

She raised her eyes absent-mindedly, smiled at her little brother, and fell to reading again.

“ Are they, ’Lecta ? ” he asked patiently, rising from his knees and crawling through the short grass to her side.

“Yes, sometimes, — some are.”

He arose to his knees and leaning against her shoulder twined both arms in a choking embrace about her neck.

“Was Powhatan good and Captain John Smith?”

“Captain John Smith wasn’t an Indian,” she replied, laughing and loosening the clasp of the warm, wet, soiled fingers. She lifted her head to kiss the dirty chin — there was a savor of strawberries about the chin and lips that she kissed.

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Vail was as sweet as a strawberry any time to his sister.

“ Did yon ever see any body that was killed by a snake?” he inquired, pulling her hat off and tumbling her ha^r.

“ No, never,” she answered with laughing vehemence, dropping into her book again. The book was bound in leather, yellowed with age, and the stained fly-leaf bore her grandfather’s name : J ohn Vail Given. Vail called it his book.

“ Did you ever tell a lie ? ” he proceeded after a pause of a second.

But Electa, although she heard, did not care to listen.

“’Lecta, did you ever?” with a tightening of the caressing arms.

“Yes,” she whispered softly.

“ Many times ? ”

“Not very many.”

“ Since you’ve been grown up ? ”

She hesitated. “Yes, once. I was timid and concealed something that I did.”

“What did you do?”

“ It wasn’t much of any thing, but I was ashamed of it.”

“ I mean what did you do about the lie ? ”

Vail had been taught to call a lie a lie, and not a flb or a story; he had been taught to give a lie the name that God gives it.

Electa hesitated again; it was difficult to speak of herself even to her little brother.

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“ I asked God to forgive me and make me brave enough to always speak the truth.”

“ So do I; but He don’t seem to,” the little fellow answered mournfully.

“No, He don’t seem to,” she answered to herself. “ He don’t seem to think about me or to care any thing about me.”

Vail played with her two long light braids and thought a moment. Electa was the odd one among the twelve, the only one with blue eyes and light hair; this distinction, with her name, was her inheritance from her grandmother.

“ Has every body in the world but God told a lie?”

“ Every body. I suppose,” she said, the thought running along with the thought that she was reading.

“ Why cant God tell a lie ? ”

“Because He can’t; He’s too good.”

“ But can’t He if He wants to ? ” he persisted.

“ He can’t want to.”

“ Why can’t He want to ? Do you know why He can’t want to?” insisted the perplexed little reasoner.

Electa raised her eyes and looked off towards the hills. Did she know why God could not want to tell a lie ?

Suddenly a light shone into her eyes ; she closed the old volume and folded her hands upon it, as her father folded his hands over the Bible in church in the closing prayer, speaking reverently.

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for had not God just revealed to her something about Himself, something that had never been given to her before?

“Could you hurt mamma, Vail? Could you be so angry with her that you could take an axe and kill her dead ? ”

“I couldn’t, I couldn’t — ^you know I couldnt''

“Why couldn’t you?”

“Because I love her so.”

“ And that’s just why God cant tell a lie ! He loves the truth just the way you love mamma, so much, so very much that He can’t kill it by telling a lie. If God could tell a lie He’d kill the truth; there wouldn’t be any more truth — the truth would be dead. He loves the truth with all His heart and might and strength, just as dearly as you love mamma. And He wants us to love the truth just as much as He does. When we tell a lie it breaks His heart, just as it would break your heart if you should see somebody take an axe and strike mamma.”

“ I’d kill any body that hurt mamma,” cried Vail in a loud voice.

“ God does not kill us, because He loves us so, and He wants to save us to teach us how to always speak the truth. But every lie makes His loving heart ache; it makes it ache because He loves the truth and because He loves us. If I should hurt mamma, you wouldn’t want to kill me, because you love us both; and so God loves the truth and He loves us. He loves us so much

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that He will punish us if we tell a lie. Oh, how God hates a lie ! ”

Electa’s eyes were full; so were the eyes that were hidden on her shoulder. That very morning Vail had told his father a lie about something that he had done. He had told the lie to papa because he was afraid of him. Vail was not the only one in the household afraid of gentle, stern papa. The dark, shorn head kept its place upon her shoulder for a long, sorrowful minute, then he lifted it, caressing her with his hands, his lips, and the top of his head, — he had six sisters to caress, — and then walked slowly away. He did not often move quickly; he was not strong; he and Electa were the only ones not strong among the twelve; if the girls had not been thoughtful and tender-hearted, their laughing, noisy life would have been a little troublesome to Electa^ and if the boys had not been thoughtful and tender-hearted, their lusty, vigorous, pushing life would have been very hard for Vail.

People said that it was another of the strange things about the Givens that the boys were as thoughtful as the girls.

Papa and mamma did not think it strange, for why should they not be? Did not the Spirit of Christ reveal itself as thoughtfully in boy nature as in girl nature ?

Vail loitered and lingered down the overgrown path to the gate ; Electa did not re-open her book, she looked after Vail, and sat thinking. Her blue

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gingham skirt covered both shoes as she sat there in the grass. She had a way of glancing down nervously to see if her feet were hidden ; the pretty kid boots were not alike, one was small and prettily shaped — as small and slight and pretty as any other girl’s boot ; the other was larger, with a deeper heel and even with this heel she could not step as lightly and gracefully as the other girls did ; she could walk more easily with her hand upon Trude’s shoulder or with Celia’s arm about her.

This lameness was one of her trials; another trial, almost as hard, in a different fashion, was the usual exclamation, “ What a family ! ” It had been hard enough when it was, “ Nine ? What a family ! ” “ Eleven ? What a family ! ” had been

mortification itself, but “Twelve? What a family ! ” had been too much to bear. At first, until baby was six months old, she had not borne it at all.

She could not explain even to herself why the exclamation so sure to come had stung her to the quick; papa was happy over it, and Celia and Mollie never seemed to care, but to her it was terrible to be singled out as “ What a family ! ” Papa repeated it sometimes with such a wondering and loving intonation that she was comforted. Perhaps the Lord said it in that voice, too, and if He did, she ought not to care for people’s tones. She ought not to care, but she did !

There were thirteen children in Grandma Given’s family; what would she do if people ever should

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say : “ Thirteen ? What a family ! ” Then more than ever would she be the one too many; she would even feel herself to be two too many.

This deep, shady, front yard, enclosed with an unpamted picket fence, was Electa’s green temple. It was nothing beside a commonplace front yard, green with long grass and weeds, and shaded with many trees, — locust, evergreen, and maple, — a damp, unwholesome place excepting in spots where the sunshine broke through; suggestive of malaria, especially as the brook ran through it; simply this and nothing beside to the butcher, the baker, the tin peddler, the doctor, the schoolmaster, and all other practical people who glanced in at it through the pickets or took a long look over the fence ; but to Electa, who held the baby there on a knoll in a sunshiny spot, or sung him to sleep in the shade, to Electa, who studied there, and read there, and wrote her journal there, shed her infrequent tears there and prayed her frequent prayers there, who dreamed dreams awake and asleep there, it was a temple, a palace, a sanctuary, a playroom, a schoolroom, a retreat when she was weary of the world and longed to be shut up in a convent, a Protestant convent, of course; for the girl lived an intense life, more intense than father and mother ever guessed ; when she was angry no one in the house was ever so angry, excepting papa, and through the long years he had learned self-control; when she was happy, she was wild with happiness; and when she was discouraged and sorrowful, she was discouraged and sorrowful with all her might.

“Don’t be moody, child,” papa often said; papa, who had been born with all her moods, and, through knowledge, by grace had outgrown them; but Electa had not his knowledge, therefore how could she have his grace ? If papa had not been the happiest man in the world, he would have been the most miserable. At seventeen it was a question, whether the daughter so like him would become the happiest or the most miserable woman in the world. To papa it was not a question ; there could not be any question about it, because God held the ordering. Electa thought that it was not a question, either; it was already decided that she should be as miserable as she could be. Who would not be most miserable to be born into a world where they were not wanted ?

Every day she felt herself to be the one — the only one among all the twelve — who had no right to be anywhere ; sometimes she questioned whether she had any right to be at all ; she had no rights, no position; she was the only one who could be spared as well as not, aye, better than not; for without her perhaps Nan could have the summer silk that she wished for aloud every day ; and if it were not for her, it might be that Archie could go to the Mercantile College ; and if it were not for her food and clothing, the money to buy Kobin a piano might be squeezed out — poor little Kobin, who never could have the things she wanted !

All the others had a place, all the others had something to do for somebody, even the baby. Number Twelve, us Arch called him, had the right to be the baby — ^the sweetest, plumpest, laughingest baby that ever was born. Celia was the eldest, and she had the right to be the eldest, for what could the eleven be or do without her ? Six boys and six girls ! But they couldn’t be an even number without her, or an even number of each; for an instant one day this thought had brought some little consolation, but like her other consolations it had taken speedy flight. Papa liked to say, “My twelve,” and she helped to make the twelve, that was all ; or to mar the twelve, was that it ?

“Twelve children, and all perfect excepting — ” she had overheard an old lady remark only yesterday. All perfect excepting herself, and she was lame. What did any body want her for? Who needed her ? There would be flve girls and six boys without her ; if she were not there, Trude would sit next to Ned at the table, and Eobin would sleep with Mollie; no one would miss her; “ Shoes for Electa ” would not be so often — would not be at all — in the family expense book that Celia kept and added up every month; she did not ask mamma for money as often as the others did. How could she, when she had no right to it ? She did not like to ask God for any thing, either, for she served Him so fitfully that she had no heart to ask for His good things ; only for the forgiveness of sins, — she must ask Him for that;

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she could live and bear her other burdens, but she could not bear the burden of making Him sorrowful.

Celia did not need her. She had mamma to love best, and she had some one beside that she must love better than mamma; and Nan did not need her, for Nan had Mollie and some one else; and Mollie and Martyn, the twins, had each other; Kobin seemed to love Trude better than she loved her, and the boys all had each other; no one “had” her, and she had nobody in particular. People were very kind to her, too kind, she bitterly thought sometimes ; they pitied her because she was not like the others. Oh, why hadn’t God made her like the others ? Why had He thought about them and forgotten to think about her ? Or why had He not given her a beautiful face or some wonderful gift to compensate for her un likeness? She was not as pretty as Nan and she could not sing like Eobin, and every one was not attracted to her as they were to Mollie, and she could not talk as entertainingly as Trude, and oh ! what was she born at all for to be different from the others ?

Papa and mamma had eleven beside her, eleven without her. Did every body have enough without her ? Oh, if somebody somewhere only didn’t have enough without her! She would do any thing for any body, and go anywhere, if she might only be needed I

The girls all had their special work to do, at home and elsewhere ; they did all their own work, and the work that she might have done, they were always keeping her from doing; saving her strength, they said, reminding her that she was not strong, taking out of her hands little things that she longed to do that she might the better take care of herself. And the dreariest of all work was this dreary taking care of herself; taking care of herself for herself They were all working for each other and bidding her think only of herself She wished that she had no self to think about; she could be as happy as any body if it were not for herself

Why had she not been born a boy? If Arch had been born a girl and she a boy, there would still be the even number, and Arch would not have been in the way in the house, and she could have found something to do on the farm or out in the world; there was room out in the world for a boy, but who, out in the world, wanted a girl, one who was lame and not strong and who didn’t know how to do any thing ?

She loved this old front yard, because out here she was not in any body’s way. Under the wide heavens with the wide earth all around her, how could she be in any body’s way? In the house when she was not sitting in Celia’s chair or reading Kobin’s book, she was using Mollie’s thimble; and when she was not troubling Trude, she was doing something that Nan did not like ; and then the boys — oh, dear! she could not get on with

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the boys as the other girls did, only with Vail; she wasn’t sweet and lovely; oh, dear, she wasn’t any thing. She almost wished that she wasn’t anywhere. She almost wished that there was another baby, and then there would be somebody to need her. It was very queer to be waiting until somebody should be born before somebody should need her; the world was so full, so over full of people, and yet with all its overflowingness she had to wait for somebody else to come. Perhaps in this very hour that she was bewailing herself under the maples, some child was being born for her to be good to, or some one was dying and leaving behind some one that would take her instead, or some one was feeling herself to be another odd one and crying out for her. But how could she find that other one? The way was long and so tangled for her poor lame feet, and she did not know which way to go. If she only needed herself, but what did she need herself for ?

Two fretted and fretful tears rolled slowly down her cheeks; the grass was growing at her feet, the leaves were thick overhead, a bird was flying high up in the blue, the water in the brook was running over the stones ; they were all doing God’s good pleasure, they all had something to do, they werejiot wasting themselves; and she was wasting herself on herself

Wasn’t any thing wasted ? How many blossoms there had been on the apple-tree near the kitchen window; they had been blown away and how few apples were forming; all those fair blossoms and so little fruit ! Out upon the prairies, out in the woods, down in the ocean, in the vegetable, in the mineral, in the animal kingdoms were there not numberless lives being wasted? Did God like wasted things? Was He so rich that He could afford to make waste ?

Was He so rich in people that He could afford to make her for nothing? Was she like an apple blossom drifting down from an overloaded tree? Wa^ her life a hidden wasted life that God could afford to forget? Did He have enough without her? Sometimes she did not kiss papa and mamma good-night and among so many they did not seem to miss it; so among so much love and service, God would not miss hers; she could creep back into herself and give unto herself, and He would not notice it; but it was so empty within herself; the things that she wanted she could not find within herself.

It was stupid and discouraging and utterly selfish to take care of herself all the time ; every thing that she had done that morning had been done for herself. But suppose — the thought flashed through her heart and mind like a flash of sunshine — that she could not do any of these things for herself, then some one would have to do them for her! Suppose that she could not dress herself or feed herself 1 Suppose that she were helpless, a burden upon all the others 1 Suppose they all had to wait upon her, instead of doing for the

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others ! That ivas a comfort ! If she must be in the world, she could not give thanks for her creation as papa gave thanks for his ; but, if she must be in the world, she was glad that she had power to keep herself from being a trial, a hardship, and a drag to other people. She was the trial, the hardship, the drag to herself, but nobody knew it. How many times she sighed before Vail reached the gate.

“Celia, Celia!”

The voice came from upstairs. Some one was always calling Celia.

In two minutes there was a call through the house for Nan, and before another two minutes had passed somebody called Eobin. Another two minutes passed, but nobody called “Electa.” They were all afraid of troubling her, or disturbing her; the children had grown up to learn that Electa must never be disturbed. If Vail had been nearer he would have found something to call her for; she was never too busy to play quiet games with him, to read to him, or to answer his questions. Every one in the house, every one save papa. Electa, and the baby were too busy to attend to Vail.

Papa had named the farm-house The Beehive; the hum of cheery life began before sunrise in summer-time, and ended — no one knew when it ended, not even Celia who was usually the last to fall asleep.

There were so many to do every thing; so many

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to set the table, to wash the dishes, so many to sweep, to sew, to make and to mend, so many to hunt up lost things, so many to suggest, so many to ask questions, so many to answer questions, so many to play pranks, so many to say funny things, so many to keep up the chorus of conversation, so many to pet and to be petted; enough for ornament, enough for use, enough for every practical and theoretical purpose, enough for the prose of life, enough for its poetry, enough for every thing, enough for every body, enough without her.

The kitchen was always full; so were parlors and halls and piazzas ; it was always full upstairs, down-stairs, out-of-doors and indoors. Beside the twelve and papa and mamma, there were the man and the maid, visitors, old, young, and middle aged, and callers! There always seemed to be a horse at one of the hitching posts, and always a ring at the door-bell.

The family treasury did not need her, mamma did not need her to help keep house, papa did not need her to help him be a minister, the children did not need her ; did any one in her father’s parish need her to-day, or any day ? Who did need her in all the wide, full, busy world ? How could she be thankful for her creation then ?

Every one in the Bible seemed to be needed, even of a colt the Lord had said. that He had need of him; every body in books had rights and position, and if they had not in the beginning, did they not find the grandest position of all before

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the book closed? Wasn’t David the youngest and least, and Joseph next to the youngest? and wasn’t it the same in fairy stories and poetry? “The youngest princess, Gwendoline,” had been running through her head all the morning. In books was it not the weak and despised who were honored at the last?

She herself did not seek any honor, it was only to be like the others that she asked; just like the others : as loving and beloved, as honored and honorable, above all, as useful, as needed ; if some one only couldn’t do without her, as papa declared that he couldn’t do without his old slippers. Not to be a ray of sunshine, not to be a drop of water, not to be a breath of air, only to be somebody’s old slippers ! How the girls would laugh at her ambition ! Celia wanted to be like mamma, Robin aimed at becoming a famous singer, Trude longed to go to Africa as a missionary. Nan said that she was hoping to marry a senator, and Mollie would be satisfied to be nothing less than a queen, and here she was longing, hungering, almost praying to be a pair of old slippers. It was too comical, she laughed aloud with the fretted* and fretful tears still on her cheeks. There was nothing that she would not do or dare, there was nothing too hard or too humble, there was nothing that she would not give up, if she might only serve one who needed her services.

“ Why, papa ! ” she exclaimed, lifting her eyes then dropping them ashamed of her wet cheeks.

“ Why, daughter ! ”

Papa threw himself down beside her, stretching himself at his full long length on the grass, turning his face away from her and pulling a blade of grass and biting it. Papa’s eyes were very black and his hair and side whiskers very white.

“Papa, is God so rich that He can afford to waste ? ”

“ Just as rich as that.”

“ Does He make things to be wasted ? ”

“ He has made things that I don’t know the use of, if that is what you mean.”

“ I can’t understand why some people have so much and some so little — the very things that some people want are wasting somewhere and He knows it.”

“Well?”

“It doesn’t seem well to me. I don’t like to think that He makes things to be wasted. And 1 don’t like to think that He makes people to be wasted.”

“ Who says that He makes people to be wasted?”

“ I know they are wasted — lives are, human lives are.”

“Are they? I don’t agree with you.”

“Don’t you agree with me that things are wasted ? ”

“Weeds and grasses and woods! Flowers that grow in solitude, perfumes loading the winds that sweep across deserts and seas; we say, also, wastes of water and wastes of sand; waste is made by

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frost, by excess of rain, by excess of heat. What cargoes of pearls are hidden in the sea; what wealth of gold and diamonds are hidden in His caverns in the earth ! In the Gulf Stream alone there is a greater amount of mill force than in all the rivers on the face of the earth. Think of all the fires underground, what do they produce save now and then, here and there, an earthquake? God is so rich in fire and yet people freeze to death. I have twelve children to love me and the richest man for miles around would give all he possesses for one little one of his very own to love him. Our rich Father has enough and to spare, enough to waste, it seems, and yet people hunger for the things that He seems to throw away. Are you hungering, daughter ? ”

Electa loved her father, but she could not tell him how her heart was aching. How could he understand ?

“I rejoice that you are among the blessed: ‘Blessed are they that hunger.’”

He arose leisurely and walked away, not looking at her again.

In an instant he returned and laid his hand on her bowed head. “ Child,” he said, “ your necessities are your wealth.”

“Then I’m richer than I ever expected to be,’ she replied lightly.

“To be pressed into a corner, to be straitened, to be in want, to be forced out of one’s self is as much to give God thanks for as creation

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itself. Be thankful that you are born and born hungry.”

“ I can’t,” thought Electa, but she said nothing, and her father loitered and lingered down the path towards the gate as Vail had done.

Electa’s half glad, half sorrowful musing was broken in upon by the sound of a sob, followed by her father’s voice in gentle pleading. Her father was bending over the low gate, a slight, bent figure clad in gray, with the face concealed by a shaker, stood before him.

Electa recognized the gray figure, and rising moved nearer to them.

“ I ain’t got any Saviour,” the voice sobbed.

“ Oh, yes, you have. Every body has a Saviour; ask Him to give you peace of mind.”

“ That’s what I want,” cried the tremulous voice eagerly. “I shall never have peace of mind. I expect that God is troubled about the people in this world; there’s so much trouble, trouble, trouble in the world.”

The feeble, white fingers grasped the minister’s, the bent form tried to straighten itself, the shaker nodded, and the gray figure moved slowly away.

“ I ain’t got any Saviour ! ” The words fell cold and heavy on Electa’s heart. Poor old Mrs. Wayne! Everyone knew her; she had not had “peace of mind” for thirty years. She was one of the people out in the world. Electa shivered and turned towards the house, — the bright breezy house with its many voices and wide open windows. The Beehive was in the world, but not out in the world.

“ Electa, child.”

Ah, some one was calling her at last. The voice was clear and full, sweet and low with singing to sleep such a little world of baby-hood; it was a voice that gave the listener a desire to see the face, and the listener was rarely disappointed, for the face was sunshine itself, and peacefulness itself; it was as sunny as the sunshine and as peaceful as the blue of the sky; there was nothing sunny in the tinge of the hair and nothing blue in the eyes; the eyes were large and brown, and the hair, as brown as the eyes with threads of silver sprinkled through it, was brought down low over the forehead, the cheeks were as tinted as a maiden’s, and the lips as fresh as the baby’s own ; there were freckles on the low forehead and on the cheeks under the eyes, but no one thought of them as a defect, they were a part of her prettiness. If she had been seamed and scarred, I suspect that the children and the parish would have thought it beautiful, and, being a part of herself, it would have been beautiful. None of her girls and boys lived a cheerier life than the mother of the twelve. Papa said that mamma was the youngest of them all. Mamma had learned that life’s burdens were not to be borne, or to be borne only long enough to feel that they were burdens ; but the children, the older ones, had only learned that life held burdens and that they were burden bear-