Aunt Blin had not fairly reached the pa.s.sage-way, Bel had just emerged from the closet with her hands full of kindlings, and pushed the door to behind her with her foot, when--crash! bang!--what _had_ happened?

A Boston earthquake? The room was full of a great noise and scramble. It seemed ever so long before Bel could comprehend and turn her face toward the centre of it; a second of time has infinitesimal divisions, all of which one feels and measures in such a crisis. Then she and Aunt Blin came together at a sharp angle of incidence in the middle of the room, the kindlings scattered about the carpet; and there was the corollary to the exhortation. The overturned cage,--the dragged-off table-cloth,--the clumsy Bartholomew, big and gray, bewildered, yet tenacious, clinging to the wires and sprawling all over them on one side with his fearful bulk, and the tiny green and golden canary flattened out against the other side within, absolutely plane and p.r.o.ne with the mere smite of terror.

"You awful wild beast! I _knew_ you didn't mind!" shrieked Bel, s.n.a.t.c.hing at the little cage from which Bartholomew dropped discomfited, and chirping to Cheepsie with a vehemence meant to be rea.s.suring, but failing of its tender intent through frantic indignation. It is impossible to scold and chirp at once, however much one may want to do it.

"You dreadful tiger cat!" she repeated. It almost seemed as if her love for Aunt Blin let loose more desperately her denunciations. There is something in human nature which turns most pa.s.sionately,--if it does turn,--upon one's very own.

"I can't bear you! I never shall! You're a horrid, monstrous, abominable, great, gray--wolf! I knew you were!"

Miss Bree fairly gasped.

When she got breath, she said slowly, mournfully, "O Bartholomew! I _thought_ I could have trusted you! _Was_ you a murderer in your heart all the time? Go away! I've--no--_con_--fidence _in_ you! No _co-on_--fidence _in_ you, Bartholomew Bree!"

It is impossible to write or print the words so as to suggest their grieved abandonment of faith, their depth of loving condemnation.

If Bartholomew had been a human being! But he was not; he was only a great gray cat. He retreated, shamefaced enough for the moment, under the table. He knew he was scolded at; he was found out and disappointed; but there was no heart-shame in him; he would do exactly the same again. As to being trusted or not, what did he care about that?

"I don't believe you do," said Aunt Blin, thinking it out to this same point, as she watched his face of greed, mortified, but persistent; not a bit changed to any real humility. Why do they say "_dogged_," except for a n.o.ble holding fast? It is a cat which is selfishly, stolidly obstinate.

"I don't know as I shall really like you any more," said Aunt Blin, with a terrible mildness. "To think you would have ate that little bird!"

Aunt Blin's ideal Bartholomew was no more. She might give the creature cheese, but she could not give him "_con_fidence."

Bel and the bird ill.u.s.trated something finer, higher, sweeter to her now. Before, there had only been Bartholomew; he had had to stand for everything; there was a good deal, to be sure, in that.

But Bel was so astonished at the sudden change,--it was so funny in its meek manifestation,--that she forgot her wrath, and laughed outright.

"Why, Auntie!" she cried. "Your beautiful Bartholomew, who understood, and let alone!"

Aunt Blin shook her head.

"I don't know. I _thought_ so. But--I've no--_con_-fidence in him!

You'd better hang the cage up high. And I'll go out for the m.u.f.fins."

Bel heard her saying it over again, as she went down the stairs.

"No, I've no--_con_-fidence in him!"

CHAPTER VIII.

TO HELP: SOMEWHERE.

There was an administratrix's notice tacked up on the great elm-tree by the Bank door, in Upper Dorbury Village.

All indebted to the estate of Joseph Ingraham were called upon to make payment,--and all having demands against the same to present accounts,--to Abigail S. Ingraham.

The bakery was shut up. The shop and house-blinds were closed upon the street. The bright little garden at the back was gay with summer color; roses, geraniums, balsams, candytuft; crimson and purple, and white and scarlet flashed up everywhere. But Mrs. Ingraham had on a plain muslin cap, instead of a ribboned one such as she was used to wear; and Dot was in a black calico dress; they sat in the kitchen window together, ripping up some breadths of faded cloth that they were going to send to the dye-house. Ray was in the front room, looking over papers. Mrs. Ingraham's name appeared in the notices, but Ray really did the work, all except the signing of the necessary doc.u.ments.

Everything was very different here, the moment Joseph Ingraham's breath was gone from his body. Everything that had stood in his name stood now in the name of an "estate." Large or small, an estate has always to be settled. There had been a man already applying to buy out the remainder of the bakery lease,--house and all. He was ready to take it for eight years, including the one it had yet to run in the present occupancy; he would pay them a considerable bonus for relinquishing this and the goodwill.

Ray had stood at the helm and brought the vessel to port; that was different from undertaking another voyage. She did not see that she had any right to hazard her mother's and sister's little means, and incur further risks which she had not actual capital to meet, for the ambition, or even possible gain, of carrying on a business. She understood it perfectly; she could have done it; she could, perhaps, have worked out some of her own new ideas; if she and Dot had been brothers, instead of sisters, it would very likely have been what they would have done. There was enough to pay all debts and leave them upwards of a thousand dollars apiece. But Ray sat down and thought it all over. She remembered that they _were_ women, and she saw how that made all the difference.

"Suppose either of us should wish to marry? Dot might, at any rate."

That was the way she said it to herself. She really thought of Dot especially and first; for it would be her doing if her sister were bound and hampered in any way; and even though Dot were willing, could she see clear to decide upon an undertaking that would involve the seven best years of the child's life, in which "who knew what might happen?"

She did not look straight in the face her own possibilities, yet she said simply in her own mind, "A woman ought to leave room for that.

It might be cheating some one else, as well as herself, if she didn't." And she saw very well that a woman could not marry and a.s.sume family ties, with a seven years' lease of a bakehouse and a seven years' business on her hands. "Why--he might be a--anything,"

was the odd little wording with which she mentally exclaimed at this point of her considerations. And if he were anything,--anything of a man, and doing anything in the world as a man does,--what would they do with two businesses? The whole vexed question solved itself to her mind in this home-fashion. "It isn't natural; there never will be much of it in the world," she said. "Young women, with their real womanhood in them, won't; and by the time they've lived on and found out, the chances will be over. To do business as a man does, you must choose as a man does,--for your whole life, at the beginning of it."

Ray Ingraham, with all her capacity and courage, at this turning-point where choice was given her, and duty no longer showed her one inevitable way, chose deliberately to be a woman. She took up a woman's lot, with all its uncertainty and disadvantage; the lot of _working for others_.

"I can find something simply to do and to be paid for; that will be safe and faithful; that will leave room."

She said something like that to Frank Sunderline, when he sat talking with her over some building accounts one evening.

He had come in as a friend and had helped them in many little ways; beside having especial occasion in this matter, as representing his own employer who held a small demand against the estate.

"I am too young," she told him. "Dot is too young. I should feel as if I _must_ have her with me if I kept on, and we should need to keep all the little money together. How can I tell what Dot--how can I tell what either of us"--she changed her word with brave honesty, "might have a wish for, before seven years were over? If I were forty years old, and could do it, I would; I would take girls for journeymen,--girls who wanted work and pay; then they would be brought up to a very good business for women, if they came to want business and they would be free, while they _were_ girls, for happier things that might happen."

"That is good Woman's Rights doctrine; it doesn't leave out the best right of all."

"A woman can't shape out her life all beforehand, as a man can; she can't be sure, you see; and n.o.body else could feel sure about her. I suppose _that_ is what has kept women out of the real business world,--the ordering and heading of things. But they can help. I'm willing to help, somehow; and I guess the world will let me."

There was something that went straight to Frank Sunderline's deepest, unspoken apprehension of most beautiful things, in Ray Ingraham's aspect as she said these words. The man in him suddenly perceived, though vaguely, something of what G.o.d meant when He made the woman. Power shone through the beauty in her face; but power ready to lay itself aside; ready to help, not lead. Made the most tender, because most perfect outcome and blossom of humanity, woman accepts her conditions, as G.o.d Himself accepts his own, when He hides Himself away under limitations, that the secret force may lie ready to the work man thinks he does upon the earth and with it. In dumb, waiting nature, his own very Self bides subject; yes, and in the things of the Spirit, He gives his Son in the likeness of a servant. He lays _help_ upon him; He lays help for man upon the woman. He took her nearest to Himself when He made her to be a help meet in all things to his Adam-child. To "_help_" is to do the work of the world.

Ray's face shone with the splendor of self-forgetting, when she said that she would "help, somewhere."

What made him suddenly think of his own work? What made him say, with a flash in his eyes,--

"I've got a job of my own, Ray, at last. Did you know it?"

"I'm _very_ glad," said Ray, earnestly. "What is it?"

"A house at Pomantic. Rather a shoddy kind of house,--flashy, I mean, and ridiculously grand; but it's work; and somebody has to build all sorts, you know. When I build _my_ house--well, never mind! Holder has put this contract right into my hands to carry out.

He'll step over and look round, once in a while, but I'm to have the care of it straight through,--stock, work, and all; and I'm to have half the profits. Isn't that high of Holder? He has his hands full, you know, at River Point. There's no end of building there, this year a whole street going up--with Mansard roofs, of course.

Everything is going into this house that _can_ go into a house; and to see that it gets in right will be--practice, anyhow."

Sunderline chattered on like a boy; almost like a girl, telling Ray what he was so glad of. And Ray listened, her cheek glowing; she was so glad to be told.

He had not said a word of this to Marion Kent that afternoon, when she had stopped him at her window, going by. He had stood there a few minutes, leaning against the white fence, and looking across the little door-yard, to answer the questions she asked him; about the Ingrahams, the questions were; but he did not offer to come nearer.

Marion was sewing on a rich silk dress, sea-green in color; it glistened as she shifted it with busy fingers under the light; it contrasted exquisitely with her fair, splendid hair, and the cream and rose of her full blonde complexion. It was a "platform dress,"

she told him, laughing; she was going with the Leverings on a reading and musical tour; they had got a little company together, and would give entertainments in the large country towns; perhaps go to some of the fashionable springs, or up among the mountain places; folks liked their amus.e.m.e.nts to come after them, from the cities; they were sure of audiences where people had nothing to do.