Sunshine Jane

"We'll put her room in order to-morrow morning, and I'll go and ask her in the afternoon."

"Oh, dear!" said Susan, with a world of meaning in the two syllables. "I hope she'll enjoy the change."

Jane laughed. "Goodness, Auntie, I never saw any one pick up new ideas as quick as you do. I was months learning how to make myself over, and you do it in just a few hours. You must have laid a big foundation of self-control up there in bed."

Susan sighed, uncheered. "It kept me pretty sharp, I tell you," she said; "when you're always hungry and have to get your food on the sly and be positively sure of never being found out, it does keep you in trim being spry pretty steady."

"May we come in?" asked voices at the gate. It was Lorenzo Rath and Madeleine. "We wanted to see how you were getting on to-day," the latter called.

"We've been changing the furniture and the atmosphere," said Susan, trying bravely to smile. "Jane is turning everything around and bringing the bright new side out."

"If you'll come and help me wash the breakfast dishes and then make biscuits," Jane said to Madeleine, "I'll ask you both to lunch."

"I want to learn how to do everything, of course," said Madeleine.

"And why shouldn't we go down to the garden?" suggested Lorenzo to Susan. "You'll point out the things you want to-day, and I'll pull 'em up."

"But there are fences to climb," said Jane.

"Fiddle for fences," said her aunt; "he'll go ahead, and I'll skim over 'em like a squirrel. I never made anything of fences."

So they divided the labor.

"The house looks so pretty," said Madeleine, as she and Jane went through to the kitchen. "How do you ever manage it, – with just the same things, too?"

Jane glanced about. "Why, there's a right place for everything, and if you just stand back a bit and let the things have time to think, they'll tell you where to put them. There was an old blue vase in the dining-room that was pretty weak-minded, but I was patient and carried it all over the place till finally it was suited on top of the what-not in the corner of the hall. The trouble with most things is that we hurry them too much at first, and then we don't help them out of their false position later."

"Oh, Jane, you are so delightfully quaint. You must tell Mr. Rath that. It's the kind of speech that will just charm the soul right out of an artist."

Jane was deep in the flour-bin. "But I don't want to charm his soul. I'll leave that to you."

"To me! Why, he doesn't care a rap about me."

"Well, then, to Emily Mead."

"Emily Mead! Oh, my dear, you have put a lot of new ideas into her head! She says that you told her that any one could get anything that he or she wanted."

"And so they can."

"Suppose she wants Mr. Rath?"

"If she wants him in the right way, she'll have him."

"I don't like that way of speaking of men," said Madeleine, dipping her white fingers into the flour and beginning to chip the butter through it. "Don't you think it's horrid how girls speak of men nowadays? I do."

"Of course I do," said Jane. "But one drops into the habit just because everybody does it. I'll never be married myself, and it's partly because I think it's all being so dragged down. Instead of two people's knowing one another and liking one another better till finally a big, beautiful, holy secret sort of dawns on them and makes the world all over new, girls just go on and act as if men were wild animals to be hunted and caught and talked about, or married and made fun of. I don't think all these new ideas and new ways for women have made women a bit more womanly. When I had to earn my living, I picked out work that a man couldn't do, and that I wouldn't be hurting any man by doing. I'm sorry for men nowadays. And I think women lose a lot the way some of them go on."

"After all, there can't be anything nicer than to be a woman, can there?" said Madeleine, stirring as the other poured in ingredients. "I've always been glad that I was a woman. I think that a woman's life is so sweet, and it's beautiful to be protected and cared for." The pink flew over her cheeks at the words.

Jane's lashes swept downward for a minute, then rose resolutely. "Or to protect and care for others. It always seems to me as if a woman was the sort of blessed way through which a man's love and strength and care go to his children. Men are so helpless with children, but they do such a lot for wives, and then the mothers pass it on to the little ones."

"Life's lovely when you think of it rightly, isn't it?" Madeleine said thoughtfully. "I'm so pleased over having come here. You see Father and Mother wanted me to spend a few weeks quietly where I could rest and pick myself up a little, and so they sent me here. I didn't care much about coming, but I'm glad now. You're doing me lots of good, Jane; you seem to help me to unlock the doors to everything that's just best in me."

"It isn't that I do it," said Jane; "it's that it's been done to me, and after it got through me, it's bound to shine on. It's like light; every window you clean lets it through into another place, where maybe there's something else to clean and let it through again."

"I suppose we just live to keep clean and let light through," laughed Madeleine, cutting out the biscuits.

"That's all."

"I think that you'd make a good preacher, Jane; you've such nice, plain, homely, understandable ways of putting things."

Jane laughed and popped the pan into the oven. "Come and help lay the table," she said. "Oh, you never saw anything as sweet as Aunt Susan's joy in her own things. She's like a little child at Christmas. It's a kind of coming back to life for her."

"They say that her sister was awfully mean to her."

"But she wasn't at all. She thought that she was sicker than she was, and she kept her in bed, and the joke of it was that Aunt Susan didn't like to hurt her feelings by letting her see what mistaken ideas she had, so she hopped up every time the coast was clear and kept lively and interested trying to be about and in bed at once."

"How perfectly delightful! I never heard anything so funny. And then you came and discovered the truth."

"Well, I didn't want her to stay in bed. I'd never encourage any one in a false belief, but she hadn't the belief, – she had only the false appearance. She didn't enjoy being an invalid one bit."

"I think it's too droll," said Madeleine. "Didn't you laugh when it dawned on you first?"

"It dawned on me rather sadly. But we laugh together now."

"What will she do when her sister comes back?"

"Oh, that will all come out nicely. I don't know just how, but I know that it will come out all right."

"Do you always have faith in things coming out rightly?"

"Always. I wouldn't dare not to. I'm one of those people who kind of feel the future as it draws near, and so I wouldn't allow myself to feel any mean future drawing near, on principle. I always feel that nice things are marching straight towards me as fast as ever the band of music plays."

"Do you believe that it really makes any difference?"

"Of course it makes a difference. It makes all the difference in the world, because hope's a rope by which any good thing can haul you right up to it, hand over hand."

"You give me a lot to think about," said Madeleine.

Jane ran out and picked some ivy leaves to place under the vase of flowers in the middle of the table. It made a little green mat. "There; we're all ready when they come, now," she said.

Presently they did come.

"Oh, what will Mrs. Cowmull say to this!" said Lorenzo, as he pulled out Mrs. Ralston's chair. "She's busy marking passages in The Seven Lamps of Architecture to read aloud to me while I eat, and now I shan't show up at all."

"Have you seen her niece lately?" asked Madeleine.

"Yes, I saw her this morning. She wants to pose for me, only she stipulated that she should wear clothes. I told her that my models all wore thick wool and only showed a little of their faces. She didn't seem to like that."

"But what did you mean? Surely you don't always have them wear thick woolen?"

"I just do. If they haven't thick wool on, I won't paint them at all."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, I paint sheep."

The mild little joke met with great favor.

"I think you're a very clever young man," Susan said with great sincerity. "To think of me having a good time laughing with a sheep painter," she added. "Who holds them for you to paint, and do you set them afterwards?"

"I paint them right in the fields," said Lorenzo.

"I should think they'd butt you from behind."

"I paint over a fence."

"Well, that's safe," said Jane's aunt. "If you're careful not to be on the side where there's a bull."

After supper Madeleine helped Jane wash the dishes.

"What fun you make out of everything," she said.

"It's the only way," Jane answered. "My mission is to make two sunbeams shine where only one slanted."

"I'm glad I'm one of the heathen to whom you were sent," said Madeleine affectionately.

Jane put her arm around her. "So am I, dear, very glad."

Madeleine laid her face against the other girl's. "Some day I want to tell you a secret," she said; "a secret that Lorenzo told me yesterday."

Jane felt her heart sort of skip a beat. "Do tell me," she said in a whisper.

"I can't now," said Madeleine. "I want to be all alone with you. It's too – too big a secret to bear to be broken in upon."

"Can you come to-morrow afternoon? Auntie's going to Mrs. Mead's to the Sewing Society, and I'll be here alone."

"That will be nice," said Madeleine; "yes, I'll come."

CHAPTER VIII

SOUL-UPLIFTING

IT was the next morning about eleven o'clock.

"You see," said Jane, sitting in the Crofts' sitting-room opposite Katie Croft who, whatever else she might or might not be, was certainly not pleasant of expression, "you see, my aunt has been an invalid so much that she appreciates what a change means to both the sick one and the one who cares for her, and so we thought that it would be so nice if you'd let me wheel your mother – "

"She ain't my mother – she's my mother-in-law," broke in Mrs. Katie Croft, instantly indignant over so false an imputation. "Good lands, the very idea! My mother! And never one single stroke of paralysis nor nothing in my family, and all reading the Bible without glasses right up till they died."

"You see, it would give you a little rest, too," Jane continued, "and it would do Aunt Susan good to feel that she was helping a weaker – "

"She ain't weak," broke in Katie Croft, again; "my lands, she's strong as a lady-ox. Anything she makes up her mind to keep she lays hold of with a grip as makes you fairly sick all up and down your back. You don't know perhaps, Miss Grey, as my husband died in our youth, and I come to live with his mother as a sacred duty, and I tell you frankly that I wish I'd never been born or that he'd never been born, forty times an hour – I do."

"You'll like a week alone, I'm sure," said Jane serenely, "and we'll like to have your mother-in-law. Perhaps she'll get a few new ideas – "

"She's stubborn as a mule," interrupted the daughter-in-law.

"But may I see her and ask her? I do so want to help you a little. Life must have been so hard for you these last years."

"Hard!" said Katie Croft, with emphasis. "Hard! Well, I'll tell you what it is, Miss Grey, – to marry a young man as was meek as Moses and then have him just fade right straight out and get a mother-in-law like that old – that old – that old – well, I'll tell you frankly she's a siren and nothing else." (Young Mrs. Croft probably meant "vixen," but Jane did not notice.) "My life ain't really worth a shake-up of mustard and vinegar some days. What I have suffered!"

"I know more than you think," said Jane sympathetically; "nurses take care of so many kinds of people. But do let me ask her. If she likes to come to us, it'll be a great rest to you, and perhaps it'll do her a little good, too."

"I can't understand you're wanting her," said Katie. "It's all over town how queer you are, but I never thought that anybody could be as queer as that!"

"Do let us go to her," Jane urged.

Katie rose and forthwith conducted the caller to old Mrs. Croft's room, a large, square place adorned with no end of black daguerreotypes and faded photographs.

"Mother, it's Miss Grey. You know? – she's Mrs. Ralston's niece."

Old Mrs. Croft received her visitor with acutely suspicious eyes. "Well?" she said tartly.

Jane took her hand, but she jerked it smartly away.

"Sit down anywhere," said Katie; "she hears well."

"Hear!" said old Mrs. Croft. "I should say I did hear. There ain't a pan fell in the neighborhood for the last ten years as hasn't woke me out of a sound sleep, dreaming of my husband – "

"Miss Grey's come to see you about something," interrupted Katie; "she – "

"I had a husband," continued old Mrs. Croft, raising her voice from Do to Re, "and such a one! Wednesday he'd go to sleep and Thursdays he'd wake, so regular you could tell the days of the week just from his habits. He – "

"Miss Grey wants – " interrupted Katie.

"I came to – " said Jane.

"I had a husband," continued old Mrs. Croft, going from Re to Mi now; "oh, my, but I did have a husband. In May I had him and in December I had him, but he was always the same to me. You can see his picture there, Miss Grey; it's all faded out, just from being looked at; but I'll tell you where it never fades, Miss Grey – it never so much as turns a hair in my heart. My heart is engraved – "

"You'd better go on and say what you've got to say," said Katie to Jane. "I often put her to bed talking, and she talks all the night through."

"I want to ask you – " Jane began.

"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies," sang Mrs. Croft. "Oh, I had – "

" – I want you to come and stay with us," Jane said, with forceful accents.

There was a sudden tense hush.

"My aunt and I want you to come and make us a little visit," the caller added.

The hush grew awful.

"A little change would be so good for you – you've been shut up so long."

Old Mrs. Croft lifted her two hands towards the ceiling.

"What do you want to take me out of my own house for? Going to do something to it that I wouldn't approve, I expect. Oh, I see it all. There was Macbeth and there was Othello, and now there's my house – What are you going to do to it, anyhow?" The question was pitched so high and sharp that Jane jumped.

"We just want to give you a little change."

"Change! I had a change once. Went to Cuba with my husband and nearly died. I don't want no change of house," with deep meaning in the emphasis; "the change that I want is another change. Change is a great thing to have. My husband never changed. Only his collars. Never no other way."

"You and Aunt Susan are old friends – " suggested Jane.

"Never nothing special," broke in old Mrs. Croft. "My goodness, I do hope your aunt ain't calling me her friend, because if she is, it's a thing I can't allow."

Jane thanked her stars that her powers of mental concentration forbade her mind to wander. "I'm sure if you came to us, you'd enjoy it," she said persuasively; "we've such a pretty bedroom down-stairs, and I'll sleep on the dining-room sofa, so you won't feel lonely."

"Lonely. I never feel lonely. I'd thank Heaven if I could be let alone for a little, once in a while. I don't want to come, and that's a fact. If that be treason, make the most of it."

"Oh, but you must come," said Jane; "you'll like it. We want you, and you must come."

"Well, get me my bonnet then," said old Mrs. Croft. "Run, Katie, I've been sitting here waiting for it for over an hour."

Katie and Jane regarded one another in consternation. They hadn't quite counted on this.

"I'm going visiting," said Mrs. Croft gaily. "Oh, my, and how I shall visit. Years may come and years may go, and still I shall sit there visiting away, and when I hear the door-bell, I shall know it's time for Christmas dinner."

Katie took Jane's hand and drew her out of the room. "I don't believe you'd better take her," she said; "she's so flighty. I know how to manage her, and you don't. Just give it up."

"No, I won't," said Jane, smiling. "I know that it's a kind thing to do and that I must do it. I'm going to take her."

"Seems so odd you're wanting to," said Katie. "You're very funny, I think. People are saying that you think that everything's for the best. Do you really believe that?"

"Of course. We can't get outside of God's plan, whatever we may do. If we do wrong, we have to bear the consequences because it's as easy to see the right thing to do as the wrong, but the great Plan never wavers."

"Oh, my," said Katie. "I'm glad to know that."

Jane pressed her hand. "I'll get things all ready, and we'll bring her over tomorrow night," she said; "that'll be best. Then she can go right to bed and get rested from the effort."

So it was arranged, and the Sunshine Nurse went home to tell Susan that Mrs. Croft had consented to come. She felt quite positive that now they would both attain unto a higher plane without any difficulty, if they kept such a guest in the house for a week.

"It isn't going to be easy, Auntie," she said, a bit later, "but it will teach you and me a lot, and if one wants to voyage greatly, one must get out into the deep water."

"I'll do anything to get hold of some different way of getting on with Matilda," said Susan, "and I begin to see what you mean when you say that if I change me, I'll change it all. If you could make flour into sugar, you'd have cake instead of biscuit, but, oh, my! Old Mrs. Croft!"

"It won't be for so very long," said Jane, "and think of Katie Croft through all these years! She's been splendid, I think."

"Well, she didn't have any other place to live, you know," Susan promptly reminded her niece.

"Work's work, no matter why you do it," Jane said, "and all the big laws work greatly. This having old Mrs. Croft is a pretty big step for you and me to take, and you'll see that when Aunt Matilda returns, we'll be so strongly settled in our new ways that she can't unsettle us. We'll be absolutely different people."

"Y – yes," said Susan, confidence fighting doubt stoutly. "I'm willing to try, although left to myself I should never have thought of old Mrs. Croft as a way of getting different."

"Anything that we do with earnest purpose is a way of getting better," said Jane. She looked out of the window for a minute, and her lip almost quivered. Susan didn't notice. "Everything is always for the best, if we're sure of it," she then said firmly.

CHAPTER IX

MADELEINE'S SECRET

THE two girls were enjoying a pleasant time in Susan's big, tidy kitchen.

"I never knew that a kitchen could be so perfectly lovely," said Madeleine, as they took tea by the little table by the window. "Jane, you are a genius! One opens the gate here with a bubbling feeling that everything in the whole world's all right."

"I'm so glad," said Jane; "it's grand to feel that one is a real channel of happiness. I always seem to see people as made to form that kind of connection between God and earth, and that happiness is the visible sign of success, a good 'getting through,' so to speak."

"Do you know, the English language is awfully indefinite. That sentence might mean good flowing like water through people, or people so made that good can go through them easily. Do you see?"

"Yes, I see. But either meaning is all right. It isn't what I say that matters so much, anyway. It's how you take it."

"I took that two ways."

"Yes, and both were good. That's so fine, – to get two good meanings, where I only meant one."

They smiled together.

"Mr. Rath and I were talking about that last evening," said Madeleine, the color coming into her face a little. "Do you know, he's really a very dear man. He's awfully nice."

Jane jumped up to drive a wasp out of the window. "You know him better than I do," she said, very busy.

"I've known him for several years, but never as well as here."

Jane came back and sat down. Madeleine was silent, seeming to search for words.

"You were going to tell me a secret," her friend said, after a little.

"I know, but I – I can't."

Jane lifted her eyes almost pitifully. "Why not?"

"I don't feel that I have the right, after all. Secrets are such precious things."

"If I can help you – ?"

"Oh, no, no. – It isn't any trouble. It's something quite different – I – I thought that perhaps I could tell you my thoughts, but – I can't."

There was a silence.

"There are such wonderful feelings in the world," Madeleine went on, after a little; "they don't seem to fit into words at all. One feels ashamed to have even planned to talk about them. One feels so humble when – " she paused – then closed her lips.

Jane put out her hand and took the hand upon the other side of the little table, close. "Don't mind me, dear; I understand."

"Do you really?"

"Yes."

Madeleine's eyes were anxious. "Do you guess? Did you guess?"

"Yes."

"And how – what – what do you think?"

"I think that it would be lovely, only, of course, I don't quite know it all, for I shall never have anything like it."

Madeleine started. "Oh, Jane, don't say that."

"But it's so, dear."

"Oh, no."

"No, dear, – I can guess and sympathize. But I shall never have any such happiness. It's – it's quite settled."

Madeleine left her seat, went round by the side of the other girl, flung herself down on the floor, and looked as if she were about to cry. "Oh, Jane, you mustn't feel so. Why shouldn't you marry?"

"I can't, dear; I've debts of my father's to pay, and I'm pledged to my Order."

"But they'll get paid after a while."

"It will take all my youth."

"But a way can be found?"

"No way can ever be. There is no one in the wide world to help me. I'm quite alone."

"Why, Jane," said Madeleine, always kneeling and always looking up, "I know some one who can manage everything, and you do, too."

Jane stared a little. "My aunt, do you mean?"

"No, – God."

Jane smiled suddenly. "Thank you, dear. I hadn't forgotten, but I just didn't think. Still, I think God means me to be brave about my burdens. I don't think that He sees them as things from which to be relieved."

Madeleine was still looking up. "But the channel doesn't think; the channel just conveys what pours along it," she whispered.

Just at this second the scene altered.

"Oh, there's my aunt!" Jane exclaimed. Susan passed the window, and the next minute she came in the door. "I've had the most bee – youtiful afternoon," she announced radiantly. "I did Jane lots of credit, for I never said a word about anybody, but oh, how splendid it was to just be good and silent, and hear all the others talk. They talked about everybody, and a good many were of my own opinion, so I had considerable satisfaction without doing a thing wrong."

Jane couldn't help laughing or Madeleine, either. "Was young Mrs. Croft there?"

"No, and most everybody says that she'll go off to-morrow and never come back, and we'll have old Mrs. Croft till she dies. They looked at me pretty hard, but I stuck to my soul and never said a word."

"It was noble in you, Auntie," Jane said warmly.

"Yes, it was," assented Susan. Then she turned to Madeleine, who had returned to her chair. "Jane's religion's pretty hard on me, but I like its results, and I can do anything I set out to do, and I don't mean to not get a future if I can help it. You see, my sister Matilda is a very peculiar person. You must know that by this time?"

"I have heard a good deal about her," Madeleine admitted.

"Well, I hope it isn't unkind in me to say that I know more than anybody else can possibly imagine."

"But she's coming back all right," Jane interrupted firmly; "we mustn't forget that."

"No," said Susan, with a quick gasp in her breath; "no, I'm not forgetting a thing. I'm only talking a little. And oh, how Mrs. Cowmull did talk about you, Madeleine. She says Mr. Rath can't put his nose out of the door alone."

"That's dreadful," said Madeleine, trying not to color, "especially as we always come straight here."