Tangles and corners in Kezzie Driscoll's life

Chapter I. Certain Man Drew A Bow At A Ventured

DARK cloud which had swept up

/-V swiftly over the sunny sky one Sabbath afternoon changed suddenly from threatening to fulfillment, and the first drops of a summer shower began to patter on roofs and pavements.

Three young girls walking up the street quickened their steps with exclamations of dismay half mock, half real.

“ Hurry, girls, hurry ! It really is going to rain hard.”

Dear me, Kezzie ! if you should get that dress wet the very first time you wear it! Just think of it!”

“ Put up your parasols, girls ; they’re

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better than nothing. Why don’t you run ?”

Thicker and faster came the raindrops. The girls abandoned the idea of reaching home. A church door stood invitingly open, and they ran up the steps and sought shelter in the vestibule. Flushed, panting and laughing from their enforced race, they stood there shaking down the delicate dresses and straightening ruffles, ribbons and wind-tossed tresses. Three pretty bits of sparkle and color — bright, gay, fluttering butterflies — were they anything more ?

“ Did anybody ever see such a trio of simpletons ? To think of our walking so far and never once looking at the sky !” giggled one.

“ How it does pour!” exclaimed another.

“There is an old deacon out at grandpa’s who is always talking about being ‘under the drippings of the sanctuary,’ but I think — ”

“ Hush, Fan ! They’ll hear you inside.” Don’t talk so.”

“ What are they doing in there, any way?” questioned the first voice, slightly lowered. — “What is it, Kezzie?”

Kezzie stood near a door leading into the room beyond. She bent her head a moment to listen, but caught only a sound of reading.

“It’s Sunday-school; though, of course, what else could it be at this hour of the afternoon ?” she answered. “ Suppose we go in ? We can’t go home in this shower, and it looks awkward to be standing out here. Besides, we can get seats if we go in.”

“That last is an inducement,” said Fannie.

They took another survey of the sky as far as it was possible to do so through the fast-falling rain, and assured one another that they should not be able to get away for half an hour at least. Then, after a little more laughing and arguing about who should go first, Kezzie whispered an imperative “ Hush !” and, opening the door, led the way, while the others followed. There was a slight rustling and turning

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of heads at the rather late arrival, but the girls slipped into a seat not far from the door and settled themselves comfortably. The superintendent glanced toward them.

“ He thinks we are dreadfully good, to visit his school this rainy afternoon,” whispered Fannie. “ He hasn’t the least idea we came only because we couldn’t help ourselves, and that our valuable presence is merely an accident.”

He might, perhaps, have called it by another name than that even had he known the circumstances ; but his gaze was a reflective one and bent upon Kezzie, with whom he was slightly acquainted, if a brief introduction at one time and a bow of recognition at sundry other times can be said to constitute an acquaintance. He knew, moreover, that she was the dauorhter of Cyrus Driscoll, manager and part-owner of the Ontario Works, and that the family attended an up-town church, not his own. That was all he knew of the young lady, but he was wondering if she could help him. He needed help that day, for the

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summer vacation had taken many of his teachers out of town, and the threatening rain-cloud had kept a few others at home.

“ Hush !” whispered Kezzie again. I know him — at least, I have met him somewhere — but I didn’t know that he belonged here.”

The gentleman approached, greeted Kezzie, and she introduced her friends. He expressed pleasure at their presence — briefly, indeed, but cordially enough — and Fannie nudged her companions to remind them of her words. By the time that her elbows were at rest again he was asking assistance : “Would not one of the ladies aid him by taking the place of an absent teacher?” He accepted the murmur of declination from the two — he had expected only that — but his glance rested more urgently upon Kezzie.

“ Cannot you take that class of girls, Miss Driscoll ? We really do need help to-day, and you know what the work is and how well worth the doing,” he said, earnestly.

She did not want to do it, but then —

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She glanced at the seat designated and saw a group of girls younger than herself and very plainly dressed ; of course she could teach them. Besides, it was a good work — quite the proper thing to do on Sunday. So she arose and followed her guide up the aisle, with a trifle of embarrassment at the novelty of the situation, but with a comfortable feeling of having sacrificed inclination to duty, and also with a pleasant consciousness that she was looking very pretty and stylish in her new summer silk, and experiencing, withal, a little spice of mischievous delight at surprising her two companions.

The superintendent with a pleasant word or two introduced her to the class, and departed well satisfied at having secured a teacher. He was not a man who held lightly the responsibilities of his office ; he would have been shocked at the thought of performing its duties carelessly; and yet, for anything he really knew of the young lady, she might have been a Mohammedan or an atheist in her belief — or uifl^elief — with skill and will to use the

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II half hour in winning others to her opinion.

Kezzie Driscoll did not doubt her own fitness for the place, however, and she felt a trifle resentful because the laugh of her two friends had seemed to express a doubt on their part. She thought she knew exactly what to do. Not that she had any idea of the lesson beyond the fact that it must be somewhere in the Bible, but she was a member of that up-town Sunday-school — that is, her name was one of a large number in the class-book of a certain teacher, and she attended the school service when the weather was pleasant and there was nothing else that she particularly wanted to do. So, of course, she knew enough of the routine to teach this class of girls.

The opening exercises were already over, and the members of the class were able to direct her to the subject for study. She found it and turned toward them, her face growing sweet and grave.

“ ‘ Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy.’ That is one of God’s commands,”

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she said. “ Can any of you tell me where it was given ? and to whom ?’'

The answer came promptly enough, almost with a dash of impatience :

“To Moses, on the mount.”

Then the speaker, a black-eyed girl, followed it instantly by a question that struck from externals to the heart of the matter :

“ What does it mean by keeping the day holy?”

“Why — ” Kezzie hesitated. “Sunday isn’t just like any other day, you know.”

“ No ; at least, it oughtn’t to be. But just how ought it to be different? What does it mean by keeping it holy?”

Now, in all her life Kezzie Driscoll had never thoughtfully asked herself that question, and she was scarcely prepared to answer it for another. She looked at the speaker and then at the book in her hand, and pondered a moment. Her eyes wandered down the page and brightened.

“Let us read the rest of it,” she suggested.

“ ‘ Six days shalt thou labor and do all

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thy work, but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God ; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day : wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.’ ”

“ There ! that is it. It is to be a day of rest, you see.”

Kezzie’s tone was one of satisfaction ; but a plain little girl at the end of the seat remarked :

It can’t really mean 'not any work,’ can it? Jesus, you know, said it was lawful to do good on that day, and the Catechism tells about ' works of necessity and mercy.’ ” "Besides, there are so many kinds of rest,” interposed Black-eyes. "Some people think it is doing nothing at all; and there’s a family of Germans near us who call it resting to go to the beer-garden all day. — Of course I don’t think the commandment means anything like that,” she added, catching Miss Driscoll’s glance of surprise ; “ but I’d like to know what really is meant by keeping the day holy. If some work is necessary and right, what is it ? and what sort of work is wrong ? And what kind of rest does it mean ?”

Kezzie became suddenly conscious that she had ventured into waters too deep for her. She was perplexed, but she was honest.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you all you want to know about it ; I haven’t thought about it myself as I ought,” she answered, flushing a little. “ Only, there are some things that we can very easily see are right for that day, and other things that must be wrong.”

“ But they are not the things that trouble me — those that are right or wrong in themselves,” said her questioner. “ It’s those that are right for other days, and not for Sunday ; and those that seem right for some people and under some circumstances, and are wrong for others. Everybody’s duty doesn’t seem to be the same duty even in keeping the Sabbath ; and it’s that which gets me all into a tangle. Of course, when God gives a command, he means something by it.”

“ Miss Driscoll, what do you suppose Christ meant when he said, ‘ The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath?” asked the plain little girl once more.

The words were familiar, but Kezzie could not place them in their proper connection of time or circumstances.

“Let us read about it,” she said; and the narrative threw light upon the subject — for her, at least. “I think he must have meant that it wasn’t made for a bondage — just a hard rule — but that it was given for our real welfare and comfort,” she remarked, thoughtfully.

“ The commandment says, ' Six days shalt thou labor.’ Don’t that make it just as much a duty to have some good useful work to do through the week as it does to rest on Sunday ?” questioned another voice.

So it went. Two or three commandments were included in that lesson ; but, whatever other classes did, Kezzie’s did l6 TANGLES AND CORNERS.

not get beyond that one. She scarcely knew whether to be glad or sorry when the bell rang and ended the conversation.

“When God gives a commandment he means something by it,” truly ; but she had not been able to tell that eager girl what it meant or to help her in straightening out any of the “tangles.”

“One more day’s work for Jesus” sang the school ; but, whatever of sweetness that thought might have held for the teachers around her, it brought no comfort to Kezzie. She was far from being sure that her work was for him, and it was with a somewhat troubled heart that she listened to the singing and the closing words. There seemed something in all this that was beyond her; and yet it ought to be hers, for she was a member of that up-town church.

There had been a time while she was away at boarding-school — she remembered it well — when the whole institution had seemed to wear a thoughtful, anxious look ; when a strange influence had pervaded the

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school, and all had yielded more or less to its power. There had been many meetings, fervid sermons and earnest broken prayers. The fashionable seminary had not been wholly in sympathy with the religious movement in the neighborhood, and had not actively aided or encouraged it, but neither did it oppose it; and when the interest, deepening and widening, swept through the school itself, principal and managers were at least gravely respectful. Kezzie's spirit had felt the trouble that brooded over others. She too had been disturbed and burdened, had listened to counsels and entreaties in a strange unanalyzed tumult of feeling, had shed some tears and whispered some confessions, and had hoped she was “ converted,” with no very clear idea of what the word meant. They told her she was ; she seemed to herself to have passed through the same experience that others described, and, of course, it must have wrought the same results.

She judged by that, poor ignorant, childish heart ! She supposed people must go through a certain course to become Chris- 2 tians, just as they must go through a certain prescribed course to become graduates. She had felt unhappy, and she began to feel better; which must mean that her burden had rolled away as did Christian’s in Pilgrim's Progress, She wrote home, as the other girls did, for permission to unite with the church, and consent was given — not gladly or sympathizingly, but only rather wonderingly. Then, one bright morning, she stood with others before the altar and took upon herself some very solemn vows, though she was too much awed, flustered and frightened distinctly to understand at the time what was said to her or what she promised, and her clearest remembrance afterward was of how her hand trembled when she pushed back her hat to receive the baptismal water on her brow.

We do not write mockingly. Amid even such stumbling, blindness and weakness the life begins in many a soul as it did in Kezzie Driscoll’s. It was a mere glimmering spark, but He who does not quench even the smoking flax watched it. She ‘‘real-

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ly meant to be good,” Kezzie whispered to herself sincerely. She prayed instead of only saying prayers, as she had been accustomed to do. She made good resoludons about reading her Bible every day, and attempted to read Baxter’s Saint's Rest and Doddridge’s Rise and Progress ; she felt as if she ought to like them, but she could not, and finally gave up the effort. She did not enjoy the prayer-meetings very much, either, after a little while, but she shrank from confessing that even to herself, and instead found a good many reasons for not attending them.

After a time the manifestations of deep feeling subsided. In the school other interests crowded in and apparently became paramount. Subjects of which it had once been easy to speak were seldom mentioned. When Kezzie’s senior year came, when examinations and standing grew to be matters of great importance, and as the graduating-day drew near, essays and dresses were the feverishly-absorbing topics. So in a little whirl of excitement her school-days ended, and she found herself at home again —

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“a full-fledged young lady,” as her brother Sydney greeted her. They seemed to have forgotten there that little episode in her school-life of a year and a half before — at least, no one mentioned it. She drifted naturally, without any particular thought or choice in the matter, into the up- town church which her family usually attended. They had removed to the city just before she went away to school ; so there were no early associations to claim her.

She did not feel as she had felt in those remembered days at school. That thought troubled Kezzie a little sometimes, but she supposed it was so with every one, she said to herself with a sigh. People could not always have just the same feelings, but she believed now just what she had believed then, and she should never forget that experience ; it had made her different, of course — a Christian : that was why she had united with the church. That “of course” had been allowed to settle a great deal for Kezzie, while her life drifted on thoughtlessly. But this Sunday-school class and its lesson had awakened troublesome voices

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that she could not hush through all the closing exercises.

A consciousness of something wanting, something wrong, oppressed her. It was vague, but she could not shake it off. Perhaps, after all, it had begun a little farther back than this class. The laugh of her companions had held a scarcely-recognized sting. They were gay, careless girls with seemingly no thought for any of these things, but did they think she was exactly like themselves ? They might well have been pardoned, so far as her life had been any evidence, for thinking just that ; but Kezzie had not realized it. They ought to have known a difference, a faint voice in her soul kept murmuring with curious persistency, as if the fault had been hers. And why had she neither knowledge, opinions nor thoughts to offer in answer to the questions that had just been asked? So the troubled current ran through her musings while she sat there listening to the singing of the school.

Usually, Kezzie noticed only the music, but to-day she heard the words. They

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“ One more day’s work for Jesus !

How glorious is my King !

’Tis joy, not duty,

To speak his beauty ;

My soul mounts on the wing At the mere thought How Christ her life hath bought.”

No, she did not know anything of that.

Presently the brief closing prayer ceased ; there was a rustling of dresses and papers, a gathering up of books, a hum of voices, and in a minute or two Kezzie was once more in the vestibule, where her two friends were awaiting her.

Fannie’s gay voice began again the instant they were fairly out :

“ Kezzie Driscoll, you abominable creature ! what possessed you to coax us in there and then go off and take that class, so that we couldn’t slip out again when it stopped raining?”

“Never mind; she has had the worst of it, judging from her face,” laughed Sue.

“What in the world did you find to talk about?”

“The lesson,” replied Kezzie, shortly.

“Dear me! You look as if it hadn’t agreed with you. What was it about?”

“Keeping the Sabbath,” Kezzie admitted, hesitatingly.

A giggle followed this announcement.

“ Fd like to have heard you discoursing on that. Did you tell them that the proper thing was to take a long walk after church, get caught in a shower, and run into a Sunday-school to save your new silk?”

Kezzie flushed with a mingling of pain and resentment.

“ I don’t see anything ridiculous in a Bible lesson, or anything to make fun of. I wish you girls wouldn’t talk in that way,” she said — somewhat shortly, it must be confessed.

Fan turned toward her a face of comical consternation, under which there was a touch of real surprise:

“ Did I ever I She has all the awful dignity of a teacher already. — Do be solemn, Sue, or she won’t let us walk with her.”

“ Don’t be cross, Kezzie ; that’s not the proper thing for a teacher,” cried Sue. “If you got into an uncomfortable place, you needn’t blame us ; you would go. I presume those girls studied the way your hair is dressed, if they didn’t study anything else. It’s in such a fluff after running through the wind. — Oh, see how those drops glisten on the trees ! Isn’t it lovely since the rain ?”

Kezzie smiled with a forced brightness, and was relieved that the conversation had changed. Yet why had the talk jarred so? for its tone did not differ from that of many another talk in which she had laughingly joined. There was nothing unusual about it except her own discomfort. That she could not shake off ; and when she had parted with the girls at the gate, she passed with a slow step up the broad walk to the large handsome house. She was barely in time for the late dinner, and hastened to her place.

It was a well-filled, handsomely-appointed table — a well-surrounded one, also, for the family had assembled. Mr. Driscoll, with care-lined, preoccupied face ; Celia, elegant and languid ; Tom, elaborate in attire and self-complacent in manner; merry, good-natured Sydney and the younger children, — all were present. Mrs. Driscoll was an invalid, and seldom left her own room except for an airing in the most luxurious of carriages, but Aunt Nene, Mr. Driscoll’s half-sister, presided over the table in a homely, unobtrusive fashion, just as she had for years practically managed the affairs of the household. She was the strong right hand of the establishment, but the family were sometimes in danger of forgetting that the skillful hand was connected with a head or a heart.

The home-group and the table-talk — which, indeed, was not very enlivening — did not banish the cloud that had so unaccountably to herself settled over Kezzie’s spirit. In answer to some comment on her late appearance she told where she had been, and almost before she was aware she found herself telling of that class and their questions.

“ They wanted to know what was the right use of the day ; and really I didn’t know what to tell them,” she concluded, suddenly.

“ I should suppose not,” laughed Tom, in his patronizing way. “ It’s rather an extensive subject to be disposed of in one half hour by a small morsel like yourself.”

“You might have more information to give others if you spent the day more profitably yourself,” commented Celia, loftily.

“By running around to so many meetings on Sunday that you are tired, cross and good for nothing on Monday,” suggested Sydney. •

Kezzie’s eyes opened wide. It had nfever before occurred to her that Celia disapproved of her way of spending the day. Celia did go to a good many meetings, but then she was interested in so many societies and literary and scientific circles that Kezzie had never thought of her Sunday engagements except as a part of her whole round of occupations..

Celia had never asked her to go with her. She was following this thought so earnestly that she did not notice that Tom was speaking. He was carelessly balancing a spoon on the white finger decorated with a large seal-ring, and was looking at Kezzie with the indulgent air of one quite capable of solving all knotty points, and condescending, though amused at their weakness, to help others out of their perplexities.

“ So, you see. Sis,” were the first words she caught, “ that it is principally useful as a day of rest and recreation — not to be made a harder, more rigorous day than all the rest by imprisoning people in-doors with a round of duties and ceremonies, but to be used as a day of freedom and enjoyment; a time to get out into the air and sunshine, and find pleasure for mind and body. That’s my idea; that’s the sort of rest we need after the wearisome toils of the week.”

“Tom knows. His ‘toils of the week’ are immense,” again interpolated mischievous Sydney.

Mr. Driscoll frowned. No one had

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thought of his noticing the conversation, but his gray eyebrows were uplifted satirically at Tom’s remark :

“ It’s a sort of rest that extends a long way into the week, sir, so far as you are concerned ; and it is a style of refreshing mind and body that will soon leave neither of them of any value to the world. A great many of the mill-men have the same idea as yours, though they have to content themselves with coarser and less expensive ways of carrying it out. They cannot have the sails and drives, fast horses and high suppers, but they can hang around beergardens and bring about the same result. It is this that makes me think McIntyre is right, and that laws closing shops and factories on Sunday are no blessing to the working-man. He had far better spend the day in honest work, earning something for his family, than in w'asting the earnings of the other days and making himself unfit to begin work on Monday.”

Aunt Nene pursed her lips grimly, but said nothing. Tom’s face flushed and his eyes flashed. He finished his dinner in angry haste and left the table and, soon after, the house.

An uncomfortable silence fell upon the party. Everybody knew that Tom’s habits and conduct were far from satisfactory to his father, but the father was not wont so openly to express his disapprobation.

Kezzie keenly regretted having broached the unfortunate topic. She had gained only the additional pain of this scene, and Celia’s glance seemed to say she should have known better. How many discordant notes there were to-day ! She walked away to a distant window and stood drearily thinking of it. There was something wrong in her life and in her home. They needed rebuilding, somehow, somewhere ; but what could she do ? Sydney found her there, and coaxed her out into the garden. The sun had nearly dried the grass — the walks, at least — he said, and it was pleasanter out of doors than in.

They were in an arbor fronting the road when Mr. Driscoll passed through the gate and took his way toward the mill. The Ontario Works were ostensibly stopped on

Sunday ; there was no full running of machinery and doors were closed. The McIntyre brothers, partners with Mr. Driscoll, though residing at a distance, had complained of the laws and customs which made this necessary, and had insisted that the day should at least be utilized by crowding into it all repairs, cleaning of boilers, changing of machinery, and the like. Mr. Driscoll could remember an old-fashioned home where the Sabbath was held in different esteem, and it might have been in part to silence old memories that he, having yielded to his partners, had since been so ready to discover good reasons for their opinion. However that was, “ repairs ” in the Ontario Works had grown into a term that covered a great deal. Often a score of men were busied there on Sunday, and those who chose could usually find some employment ; while Mr. Driscoll, feeling the necessity of looking after them a little, frequently spent an hour or two of the afternoon in glancing over letters and papers in his office. It was for this purpose that he now went to the mill.

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Kezzie watched his departure with troubled eyes.

“I wonder if it is wrong?” she said.

“What?” Sydney looked at her with astonished eyes. “ Oh ! to have any work going on at the mill to-day, do you mean ? And for father to go there ? I don’t know ; only there are a great ihany things that are worse.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“ No ; but it is of no use for us to think about it or to try to decide it, for it isn’t anything that we can help or hinder in any way.”

“ That is the trouble,” she answered, sadly. “ I wish we could make all the crooked things straight. Oh dear ! I’d like to be good if only I knew how. I do really want to be.”

“Well, you’re a great deal better now than Celia, with all her meetings — more obliging and ready to do things for a fellow, and nicer every way. You are good enough for me, Kezzie.”

Words and tone were pleasant. She half forgot her unrest while they were together, but it awoke again when she was alone.

“ Oh dear !” she sighed as she laid aside the pretty dress at night and remembered how gayly she had donned it in the morning. “ There are so many sudden corners ! Why is it that when I am satisfied and everything ahead looks straight, I must always come to a corner — a place to turn or choose ?”

Chapter II. Where The Arrow Rankled

HE morning sunlight shone in through

X the pretty window-draperies, danced across the dressing-table with its dainty trifles, and made golden pictures on the pale-blue wall beyond.

Kezzie opened her eyes dreamily, and lay for a moment enjoying the beauty and the brightness. Then a dull pain stole through it all — the remembered shadow of yesterday.

“Well,” she said, clasping her hands on the pillow above her head and slowly facing the troublesome thought that seemed to have kept vigil at her bedside all night for the express purpose of greeting her in the morning, “ I can’t help everything. It’s as Syd says ; I really can’t do anything about the mill and Tom, and all that, even