The Relief Committee was organizing in Park Street Vestry.

Women with help in their hands and sympathy in their hearts, came there to meet women who wanted both; came, many of them, straight from the first knowledge of the loss of almost all their own money, with word and act of fellowship ready for those upon whose very life the blow fell yet closer and harder. Over the separating lines of cla.s.s and occupation a divine impulse reached, at least for the moment, both ways.

"Boffin's Bower" was all alert with aggressive, independent movement. Here, they did not believe in the divine impulse of the hour. They would stay on their own side of the line. They would help themselves and each other. They would stand by their own cla.s.s, and cry "hands off!" to the rich women.

What was to be done, for lasting understanding and true relation, between these conflicting, yet mutually dependent elements?

In their own separate places sat solitary girls and women who sought neither yet.

Bel Bree was one.

The little room which had been home while Aunt Blin lived there with her, was suddenly become only a dreary, lonely lodging-room. Cheeps and Bartholomew were there, chirping and purring, the sun was shining in; the things were all hers, for Aunt Blin had written one broad, straggling, unsteady line upon a sheet of paper the last day she lived, when the fever and confusion had ebbed away out of her brain as life ebbed slowly back, beaten from its outworks by disease, toward her heart, and she lay feebly, but clearly, conscious.

"I give all I leave in the world to my niece Belinda Bree."

"Kellup" came down and buried his sister, and "looked into things;"

concluded that "Bel was pretty comfortable, and with good folks,--Mrs. Pimminy and Miss Smalley; 'sposed she calc'lated to keep on, now; she could come back if she wanted to, though."

Bel did not want to. She would stay here a little while, at any rate, and think. So Kellup went back into New Hampshire.

There was a little money laid up since Miss Bree and Bel had been together; Bel could get along, she thought, till work began again.

But it was no longer living; it would not be living then; it would be only work and solitude. She was like a great many others of them now; girls without tie or belonging,--holding on where they could.

Elise Mokey had said to her,--"See if you could help yourself if you hadn't Aunt Blin!" and now she began to look forward against that great, dark "If."

Everything had come together. If work had kept on, there would have been these little savings to fall back upon when earnings did not quite meet outlay. But now she should use them up before work came.

And what did it signify, anyhow? All the comfort--all the meaning of it--was gone.

They were all kind to her; Miss Smalley sat with her evenings, till Bel wished she would have the wiser kindness to go away and let her be miserable, just a little while.

Morris Hewland knocked at the door one afternoon when the music-mistress was out, giving her lessons.

Bel did not ask him in to sit down; she stood just within the doorway, and talked with him.

He made some friendly inquiries that led to conversation; he drew her to say something of her plans. He had not come on purpose; he hardly knew what he had come for. He had only knocked to say a word of kindness; to look in the poor, pretty little face that he felt such a tenderness for.

"I can't bear to give things up,--because they _were_ pleasant," Bel said. "But I suppose I shall have to go away. It isn't home; there isn't anybody to make home _with_ any more. I know what I _had_ thought of, a while ago; I believe I know what there is that I might do; I am just waiting until the thoughts come back, and begin to look as they did. Nothing looks as it did yet."

"Nothing?" asked Morris Hewland, his eyes questioning of hers.

"Yes,--friends. But the friends are all outside, after all."

Hewland stood silent.

How beautiful it might be to make home for such a little heart as this! To surround her with comfort and prettiness, such as she loved and knew how to contrive out of so little! To say,--"Let us belong together. Make home with _me_!"

Satan, as an angel of light, entered into him. He knew he could not say this to her as he ought to say it; as he would say it to a girl of his own cla.s.s whom father and mother would welcome. There was no girl of his own cla.s.s he had ever cared to say it to. This was the first woman he had found, with whom the home thought joined itself.

And this could not rightly be. If he took her, he would no longer have the things to give her. They would be cast out together. And all he could do was to make pictures, of which he had never sold one, or thought to sell one, in all his life. He would be just as poor as she was; and he felt that he did not know how to be poor.

Besides, he wanted to be rich for her. He wanted to give her,--now, right off,--everything.

Why shouldn't he give? Why shouldn't she take? He had plenty of money; he was his father's only son. He meant right; so he said to himself; and what had the world to do with it?

"I wish I could take care of you, Bel! Would you let me? Would you go with me?"

The words seemed to have said themselves. The devil, whom he had let have his heart for a minute, had got his lips and spoken through them before he knew.

"Where?" asked Bel. "Home?"

"Yes,--home," said the young man, hesitating.

"Where your mother lives?"

Bel Bree's simplicity went nigh to being a stronger battery of defense than any bristling of alarmed knowledge.

"No," said Morris Hewland. "Not there. It would not do for you, or her either. But I could give you a little home. I could take care of you all your life; all _my_ life. And I would. I will never make a home for anybody else. I will be true to you, if you will trust me,--always. So help me G.o.d!"

He meant it; there was no dark, deliberate sin in his heart, any more than in hers; he was tempted on the tenderest, truest side of his nature, as he was tempting her. He did not see why he should not choose the woman he would live with all his life, though he knew he could not choose her in the face of all the world, though he could not be married to her in the Church of the Holy Commandments, with bridesmaids and ushers, and music and flowers, and point lace and white satin, and fifty private carriages waiting at the door, and half a ton of gold and silver plate and verd antique piled up for them in his father's house.

His father was a hard, proud, unflinching man, who loved and indulged his son, after his fashion and possibility; but who would never love or indulge him again if he offended in such a thing as this. His mother was a woman who simply could not understand that a girl like Bel Bree was a creature made by G.o.d at all, as her daughters were, and her son's wife should be.

"Do you care enough for me?"

Bel stood utterly still. She had never been asked any such questions before, but she felt in some way, that this was not all; ought not to be all; that there was more he was to say, before she could answer him.

He came toward her. He put his hands on hers. He looked eagerly in her eyes. He did not hesitate now; the man's nature was roused in him. He must make her speak,--say that she cared.

"_Don't_ you care? Bel--you do! You are my little wife; and the world has not anything to do with it!"

She broke away from him; she shrunk back.

"Don't do that," he said, imploringly. "I'm not bad, Bel. The world is bad. Let us be as good and loving as we can be in it. Don't think me bad."

There was not anything bad in his eyes; in his young, loving, handsome face. Bel was not sure enough,--strong enough,--to denounce the evil that was using the love; to say to that which was tempting him, and her by him, as Peter's pa.s.sionate remonstrance tempted the Christ,--"Thou art Satan. Get thee behind me."

Yet she shrunk, bewildered.

"I don't know; I can't understand. Let me go now Mr. Hewland."

She turned away from him, into the chamber, and reached her hand to the door as she turned, putting her fingers on its edge to close it after him. She stood with her back to him; listening, not looking, for him to go.

He retreated, then, lingeringly, across the threshold, his eyes upon her still. She shut the door slowly, walking backward as she pushed it to. She had _left_, if not driven the devil behind her. Yet she did not know what she had done. She was still bewildered. I believe the worst she thought of what had happened was that he wanted to marry her secretly, and hide her away.

"Aunt Blin!" she cried, when she felt herself all alone. "Aunt Blin!--She _can't_ have gone so very far away, quite yet!"

She went over to the closet, with her arms stretched out.

She went in, where Aunt Blin's clothes were hanging. She grasped the old, worn dress, that was almost warm with the wearing. She hid her face against the sleeve, curved with the shape of the arm that had bent to its tasks in it.