From flax to linen

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Contents

OHAPTEB. , PAGE.

• I. A GIRL 7

II. A WOMAN 50

I. A Girl

“Nobody likes a girl. I am a girl, therefore nobody likes me,” half laughed, half lamented a girl of twenty as she swung backward and forward with a graceful, indolent motion in the swing under the apple tree in Auntie Holbrook’s green back yard. Auntie Holbrook lived in Windham — ^rather the village was Windham, and a mile distant where the low-eaved, brown farm house nestled in a nook on the slope of a hill and near a brook, was “ The Backwoods.”

Grace had heard her father call it “the Backwoods ” ever since she could remember ; and using the capitals, dated her journals and letters in this fashion.

The name was a part of the charm to the cityborn, boarding-school bred girl ; she loved the loneliness. The nearest neighbor was half a mile away, his light was hidden by the outbuildings, so that the nearest light in the winter darkness was the shining windows of the village store and post-office, on the brow of the hill on which small Windham was born, and lived and married and died. Grace’s father declared they did nothing else and that they would not have had spirit sufficient for these darings had they not all come by nature.

Auntie Holbrook told him with that simple manner of hers, that some of them were born again, and that came by grace. Every summer since she was sent to boarding school in Baltimore in her tenth year Grace had spent with dear Auntie Holbrook in the Backwoods. That first summer little Hester died, the third summer grown up John was lost at sea, the next summer Uncle Holbrook died suddenly one Sunday morning, and all the other summers she and Auntie Holbrook, the bereaved and comforted mother, and the sorrowful and comforted wife, had been alone together.

“ Some summer you will go,” Auntie Holbrook said, when Grace was twenty, and Grace answered that she would never go, she would always love her “ Backwoods ” better than any spot on the earth.

A GIRL.

Mrs. Holbrook had been her best friend since her first step-mother died ; she was the only sister of her first step-mother and had taken the sobbing child to her arms and heart the night they watched together while the young step-mother slept her life away.

A year afterward Grace had a second step-mother who had not loved her, and had urged her father to send her to a distant boarding school. She was not recalled at her step-mother’s death nor at her father’s fourth marriage. Her third step-mother whom she saw but twice, died when Grace was nineteen, and then the homesick school girl had pleaded to be taken “home,” and become her father’s housekeeper, but the reply to her impulsive, warm-hearted coaxing letter she read but once and then tore it into bits in a passion of disappointed and indignant tears.

“ It is not best,” were the few hurried words, my business takes me to Europe twice a year; I cannot be hampered with a girl. Stay at school as many years as you will, and in the summer go into the “ backwoods.”

At twenty years of age Grace Manning was not acquainted with her father ; in her album on the page beside the photograph of a girl about her own

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age, with brown eyes and a sweet expression, whom her father had told her was the likeness and a perfect one of her mother, taken a month after she was married, was a photograph of her father taken at the same time. It was a dark face with a full heavy beard, eyes thoughtful rather than grave, and a high bald forehead. He had changed since the picture was taken; as his daughter knew him, he was stern rather than grave, the full beard was as white as snow; his words were as sharp as his voice, rude to incivility. Once he had visited her at boarding school, kissing her when he came and when he went, and giving her a ten dollar gold piece ; afterward, before he was married the last time he had been with her two days at Auntie Holbrook’s, but he was silent and grave ; although he spoke kindly and asked if she were happy and if she would like her monthly allowance to be increased, she could not feel at home with him ; she reproached herself because she felt relieved when the stage stopped for him in the early morning, and went up to her room and cried all the morning because she had not a splendid father like Mary Maxim’s.

A few pages from the last leaves of her boarding

A GIRL.

school journal will reveal her real self to‘ you as description of mine will fail to do.

Grace Manning wrote as easily and as unconsciously as she#bieathed ; her journal was a revelation of herself even more than her many-paged, frank, affectionate letters to Auntie Holbrook.

“ Lately,” the journal ran, “I have awakened to the fact that I am wholly without any intimate gill friend. Something is sure to come between me and any somebody who loves (and admires) me for a while.

I think it must be my temper. And my disposition. And my selfishness. I am not like other girls because I have had no father, no mother, no brother, no sister ; I have nobody (but Auntie) and I shall always have Nobody.

Do I outgrow girls, or do they outgrow me? I have had my picture taken ; Mary Maxim, (who doesn’t like me or admire me) says it looks like me; unhappy and haughty.

But I am not haughty — I am only unhappy. All the girls here are so bright and happy and have such lovely homes to go home to ; if one hasn’t a father she has a mother, or if one.be an orphan she has a houseful of cousins ; three have step-mothers, but they are nice, lovely step-mothers ; I enjoy the

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enviable notoriety of having had three step-mothers. Or is it four ?

(I’ll write and ask father.)

I may have another ; father is not a very old man yet — only fifty.

Mary Maxim’s mother died when she was fifteen (when Mary was) and Mary’s birthday was yesterday. She is a year older than I — and she declares, with a stamp of her foot and a flash of her splendid, big, black eyes that she will run away the day her father marries again. (But she is sure he never will).

Once when she was ill and nervous — she is not one bit strong — she made him promise always to love her best, and never get married again. If I had a father like him I would make him promise, too.

He pets her as though she were a baby ; she sits on his lap with his arms about her and her head on his shoulder and he talks to her and kisses her and calls her “ darling.”

My heart would break with joy if my father should do that.

She has a grandmother who loves her, her mother’s own mother (it must be nice to have an own mother) and an aunt who is handsome and walks

A GIBL.

like a queen ; they live with her at Riverside, her father’s country seat in Virginia, because he promised her mother that they should never go away from Mary.

She lias two splendid brothers beside; Harold, who is five years younger, with blue eyes and curly yellow hair, and John, who is older, a tall, handsome fellow, almost as dignified as Judge Maxim himself. He is a lawyer like his father. She has everybody and everything, and I have Nobody and Nothing.

She has a second cousin, Henleigh Maxim, who comes to school sometimes.

I wonder why God doesn’t love me and give me everything as he does Mary Maxim.

But I am not good.

But neither is she. She is not one whit better than I am. Sometimes I think she is not half as good.

Some girl is always coming to me for help in something. Now I never go to any of them for help in anything.

I help myself.

Somehow I would rather dig things out for mysell and weep my little weeps out all by myself.

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Nobody thinks I need help, bat, oh, how I do ! I want the kind of help and sympathy that good fathers give.

Least of any one does my father know his own child — the only blood kin I have in all this world, so full of fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters.

My own mother was a poor little orphan girl — a poor factory girl, and my father was ten years older and quite educated and rich.

I wonder if he .treated her as he treats me.

I know so little of her ; her name was Grace and she was pretty and full of energy and mischief. If I could go home to father and be the grown up daughter in my father’s house I would be as happy as a queen. I would sew for him, and pour his coffee and talk to him and — love him.

I could love him ; the love is in me.

Mr. Preston, our principal, says I am the kind of stuff that gives and gives and gives. *

But I give nothing to my father.

The whole world might listen to our most private conversations and read our most confidential letters.

“ My dear father,” I write, and he isn’t.

“ Your loving daughter,” and I am not.

A GIRL.

Our letters are usually about my studies and money — he gives me all I ask.

But I do not want his money ; I want Mm.

Mary has sheets -and sheets from her father.

She calls him her lover, and he calls her his little sweetheart.

She is dignified, and yet so timid and easily influenced. Her grandmother and queenly aunt Horatia move her at their will.

' She is afraid of both of them.

It must feel queer to feel afraid of people.

She says she never was afraid of her father in her life, and that is the secret of her boundless love for him.

I am foolish, and impulsive, and outspoken.

I told Judge Maxim yesterday when he called, to take Mary to drive and told her to ask one of the girls and she asked me (because I helped her with her Algebra and Rhetoric), that I would give the whole world to have a father like him.

“You can’t” said Mary. “Nobody in all the world has any right to iny father but me.”

Then he laughed and said he was like the one hundred thousand dollar diamond he had been telling us about, there was but one and only one had it.

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“I suppose the happy owner can sell it or give it away,” I said.

“ And then he isn’t like me,” Mary said in one of her flashes, “ for I can neither sell nor give.”

Her father laughed and patted her fingers.

I would like to write a story about them — it is so wonderful and beautiful; she. so delicate and timid and easily influenced and loving him so, and he so tall and splendid, with his black eyes that flash and grow tender, and his white moustache and white hair and generous, courteous manner, as if he were a knight and every school girl even were a lady.

His talk is wise and merry at once — I do not wonder that Mary has a sort of worshipful love for him.

He is older than my father — fifty-five.

I have just snatched out these leaves ; they were all about myself. I am sick and tired of myself. I am in a sort of bitter, reckless mood, and have been for days. ^

Sometimes I think I am never in any other. My abominable pride has caused a barrier to rise up between myself and Mary. We do not half love each other — we quarrel about lessons and games and everything.

A GIRL.

She is jealous because her father said if he had au other daughter he would wish for her to be like me ; she told him I was hot tempered and willful and spunky, and made enemies among the girls and was never twice alike — which is all true, and more beside.

Still, I’m glad he said it.

I want to be somebody’s girl.

He called me Gracie^ (nobody else does) and made me feel like a little girl whom somebody loved. Mabel Halsey spent last vacation with Mary at Riverside ; she says the house is perfectly elegant. Oh, if she would only ask me.

I could make her; I could love her and flatter her and wind her about my little finger ; no, I couldn’t, because I wouldn’t.

I would feel too mean.

When I quarrel with her, I am proud of myself — I would despise myself to get anything out of her.

What is my ideal of my beautiful name ? Something finished — like linen finished from flax.

Grace should be tall and rounded and perfectly proportioned, with sweetest, gravest eyes, and curves about her lips, that spoke happy things, 2

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and a voice like the music Mary loves to play, and a manner — I cannot decide upon her manner, I never saw it — but it would grow out of what she was.

Oh, I shall never be Grace. I wish my name were something hurried and horrid.

I can write it here, but I wouldn’t dare speak it to anyone, (hot even Auntie H.) I know if I couldn’t go to God over and over and over again, I should almost despair.

When I sa}^ “ Our Father,” I think he is like Mary’s father — I mean that he loves me as lovingly as Mary’s father loves her.

And I do not want to be any more afraid of him. The thought of God (and Christ as God) quiets and rests me as nothing else does.

He is so very strong and protecting.

Mary almost faints in a severe thunder storm ; at home night or day she runs to her father, and, no matter how he is engaged, he gives it all up and takes her into his arms.

Myself is my greatest trouble.

I hate myself at times, so heartily and so utterly despise myself, that I get almost desperate. And then I say sharp things and bitter things, and the girls wonder at me,

If only I could give up my will.

If only I need not be made to do things, but if I could only give up and do right things, because I loved to — as Jesus did when he lived on earth, and had hard things to do. (The girls would be surprised to see that, for in Bible class I am inattentive and say things to make them laugh. Last Sunday Mr. Preston sent me to my room. And I went and locked my door and cried).

Miss Maybil, our music teacher, says I am “ wild and ridiculous.”

I know I am everything bad and nothing good. Still I would rather be myself than even Mary Maxim ; my own quick, hateful, jealous, willful, unhappy, proud self.

Mary has been working for the prize in music and I have taken it from her. I have the first prize in English composition, beside.

I wish my father cared.

They are both gold medals. I have tucked them away in the bottom of my trunk.

Mary looks so pale ; I don’t see what I worked so hard to get it for, when I knew she wanted it for her father’s sake.

I didn’t want it even for my own sake ; I simply wanted to be first. And I didn’t want to help

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Mary, and make her love me, and invite me to Riverside ; I should despise myself for being so mean.

Mabel is going again.

And I am going to the Backwoods to wash dishes in that small kitchen, and pick peas, and sweep, and swing in ihy dear old swing, and roam in the fields and woods, and beg my father for a piano for my graduation present. Mary is to have her mother’s diamonds and go to Europe with her father and aunt and Henleigh Maxim. My father goes twice a year, but he has never thought of taking me.

But he goes on business for his employers, and Judge Maxim goes because he can go anywhere and do anything he likes and anything Mary coaxes for.

This is the last page of my school journal. I can never be a school girl again, (and I am glad of it,) so I must write something that that Grace would write.

I didn’t make any one laugh in Bible class to-day. I felt grave enough.

I felt wicked enough too. I was rebellious, and I am rebellious this very minute.

A GIRL.

I don’t know what gets into me.

Mr. Preston said God’s will was the most comforting thing he had to give us, and I don't believe it.

I do not love his will about everything. I almost believe I do not love it about anything.

I do not love it if it is his will tliat makes my father so far away from me, and so different from my ideal of a father.

(Perhaps it isn’t ; perhaps it is my father’s will.) I do not love his will about myself. T do not want to be what I am.

I do not want to be so friendless and desolate, and alone and homeless, not knowing what will happen next to me.

Father writes that I must go to the Backwoods, that is all.

What would he do with me if there were no Backwoods, I wonder?

He couldn’t put me in an Orphan Asylum or a prison; he might confine me in an Insane Asylum.

I am rebellious, and I want to be rebellious. I enjoy it.

The very words G-od's will are dreadful to me.

They mean a tight hold upon me; something impossible for me to do, or be ; the grasp of unre-

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lenting iron fingers upon my heart, and will, and life.

How can it comfort me ?

How can I love it?

He said ; “ God’s will for the world is J esus.”

That helped me and comforted me.

I am not afraid of Jesus ; I almost love him.

But I dare not pray as he asked us to pray — that we may do God’s will and have God’s will. I cannot; I cannot. I am afraid of it. I cannot and I will not. I was crying out; “I wont, I wont,” all the time that he was talking.

Mary did not look afraid ; but then she said afterward that she was not listening; she was thinking about her father and Riverside.

I don’t dare confess to any one how wicked I am ; they would think I am too wicked to live with. I’ll go in the Backwoods and live alone with Auntie Holbrook, who looks at me with loving, surprised, grieved eyes, and gently suggests that I shall “ outgrow ” my moods.

Mr. Preston says my moods are owing to my temperament.

I wish I hadn’t any temperament.

I wish I hadn’t any me.

A GIRL.

The thick book with its passionate, discouraged, tear-stained pages was thrust into her trunk and packed away with her school books in Auntie Holbrook’s garret, with a vow as she gave it an energetic push into a dark, dusty corner, never to begin another journal until she begun another self.

It was a month afterward that she sat swinging under the apple tree in a pretty pink and white gingham that she had made herself, with her hair falling in curls to her waist, her plump white fingers clinging to the rope, a twinkling, mischievous light in her brown eyes.

“ The child is happy to-day,” thought the little old lady standing on the door stone. “ It takes such a little to make her happy,” she sighed. There was a yellow, business-like envelope in the old lady’s hand ; it was six weeks since Grace had heard one word from her father — she had alluded to the fact this morning, with a proud little toss of her head ; it was humiliating to write every week and receive a reply whenever he chanced to remember that he had a daughter in existence.

The last, “ My dear father,” was reluctantly written and the ending to the brief note was simply “your daughter, Grace,” for she was his daughter, whether they loved each other or not.

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“ Grace, I have something for you,’^ called Mrs. Holbrook.

Grace sprang out of the swing and tripped towards her ; what might she not have for her?

What might there not be in the world for her now that she was twenty years old ?

“A letter,” she cried, delightedly, almost snatching it from the extended hand.

“ From your father.”

“At last! I’ve almost forgotten what was in the last. How many nights I’ve walked up to the mail for it.”

“ This came last night. You know you didn’t go last night. Harry Beam brought it.

Grace had torn the envelope open and stood reading the large sheet with deepening seriousness in her face.

“No bad news? I’m alway^s .expecting bad news,” said Mrs. Holbrook, tremulously.

“What would be bad news?” cried Grace, lightly, “that he is going to Europe again? He is always going to Europe I That he doesn’t feel well ? He always doesn’t feel well. That I must stay in the backwoods ? I must^always stay in the backwoods. He has made his will. That is something new. And left all his property to me. To

A GIRL.

whom else should he leave it? But I don’t see why he should make his will now more than any other time when he has gone away. If anything happens — what should happen ? But if anything does happen Judge Maxim will take care of my property, and I must stay with you. I think he might have cared enough for me to send for me once in his life — or to come and say good-by. I wonder what Mary Maxim’s father thinks of my father.”

“ Does he know him ? ”

“ Oh, yes ! That is why he sent me to Baltimore. Mary was there, and her father told my father. Auntie Holbrook,” with sudden resolve in tone and manner, “ does my father ever pay my board while I am here ? ”

The little old face colored ; how had the girl divined her thought ?

“ Tell me,” cried Grace.

“Why, no, not yet.”

“ And I’ve been here — how many summers ? ”

“ That doesn’t matter, dear.”

“ It matters to me,” said the girl, proudly ; “ he does not speak of money at all. And I shall not go back to school again. Auntie Holbrook, if you do not let me work and pay my board I shall run away.”

“ You do work.”

“ How much? An hour a day? I never thought of it. I didn’t know my father could do such a thing. And I have been idle and let you work for me. I think I must owe you all my father’s money,” said the sincere, grateful voice, “ but I haven’t any money. Only two dollars ! I counted it this morning.”

‘‘ You cannot help it, child. I did not like to speak of it to your father. If I were rich ! But I am a poor woman ! Only this little place and a few hundreds in the bank.”

With an indignant toss Grace threw the letter into the grass and sprang forward, catching the small old lady in her arms, exclaiming between a sob and a laugh : “ I will stay with you and work

for you. I wish I could earn money for you, but I can’t do anything but school-girl things. Oh, I am so sorry and ashamed ! ”

Auntie Holbrook patted the pink and white gingham shoulder, and kissed the long hair.

“ Will you take me and own me ? Nobody ever owned me ! ”

“ Somebody will some day, little girl. I do not expect to keep you always ; I do not want to.”

Grace lifted her head.

A GIRL.

‘‘ Will you let me learn to wash and iron, and churn and bake ? ” she asked, earnestly.

“ And whitewash and make carpet rags ? ” laughed the relieved voice.

Auntie Holbrook was relieved. Grace’s long summers had been a serious drain upon her slender income ; but what could she do ? She loved the child.

On Christmas day, through a letter from Judge Maxim, Grace received tidings of her father’s sudden death ; he died and was buried in England. By the same mail came a sympathetic letter from Mary: “ It would kill me if my father should die. He says I must say something to comfort you, but I do not know what comforts people in trouble. Grandmother says I may ask you to come to Riverside for a long visit, but I cannot set the time ; this winter we are in Richmond, and Aunt Horatia wants me to be very gay. We may go abroad again in dhe summer ; Aunt Horatia cannot live outside of Paris. I do not think I care. Papa insists upon the doctor coming every week, but it is all nonsense ; I am not ill, I am only easily tired. Pardon me for talking about myself when you are in trouble. I wish I could help you.”

Grace did not know whether she were “in

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trouble” or not. Her father had not written since the letter in which he had informed her that he was going abroad, and she had not replied to that letter because he had forgotten to give her any address.

J udge Maxim wrote that her father’s will was in his possession, and that until she became of age he had the care of her small property; the income would be about three hundred dollars a year. The letter was simply business like, but it was something to her to know that Mary Maxim’s father had written it, and that he had asked Mary to write to her.

And some day she might go to that beautiful Riverside.

She had not lost her father ; she could not lose what she had never had.

“Shall you put on mourning?” asked Mrs. Holbrook.

“ No,” said Grace.

But she wept all night long for the something she had never had.

After that she began another journal, because she was another self.

June 14, 18 — . I do not know what I am writing this for ; I think it is for company. I have

A GIBL.

no companionship beside dear old Auntie, and the girls from the village once in a while.

It is five years since father died, and I am twenty-five. The years are just the same. I grow older, that is all, and Auntie grows sweeter. I suppose I know what I want ; I wonder if I do. Twice a week I walk to Stapleton (three miles distant), to do our little shopping and get books from the library.

Mr. Beam takes Auntie to church, and I walk. We go to the village to church ; we live nowhere — between a village and a town.

Sunday the minister said something that I cannot forget if I would.

To have what we desire may be good ; to wait for it may be better ; to have it not at all may be best.

He is a young man, good and solid, but not brilliant ; I like to hear him read the Bible.

June 29. — It is Sunday afternoon, and I am lonely and desolate ; Auntie H. is lovely, but she isn’t all I want ; she isn’t half of what I want.

As I lay on the lounge with a headache (I read till midnight last iiight), she asked me if she should read the Bible to me. She always reads in the Old Testament. Perhaps she thinks I do not read the

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Bible enough ; sometimes I do not open it for days, and then I will be so hungry for it that I read it for weeks — that and nothing else. I read a book through at a time. Auntie stops with a chapter.

To-day sbe read about Samson.

Something strikes me. I feel as if I had grown mentally and spiritually, after I have thought of something myself.

I never look in the Commentary for the explanation of a passage until I have tried to dig it out for myself.

After Samson with his mighty strength from the Lord had broken the new cords upon his arms as burnt flax, and slain single-handed a thousand men, he could not get for himself so small a thing as a drink of water. He was so afraid that he would die of thirst that he cried out to the Lord to get him water.