Just Sixteen.

Just Sixteen

A LITTLE KNIGHT OF LABOR

THE first real snow-storm of the winter had come to Sandyport by the Sea.

It had been a late and merciful autumn. Till well into November the leaves still clung to their boughs, honeysuckles made shady coverts on trellises, and put forth now and then an orange and milk-white blossom full of frosty sweetness; the grass was still green where the snow allowed it to be seen. Thick and fast fell the wind-blown flakes on the lightly frozen ground. The patter and beat of the flying storm was a joyous sound to children who owned sleds and had been waiting the chance to use them. Many a boy's face looked out as the dusk fell, to make sure that the storm continued; and many a bright voice cried, "Hurrah! It's coming down harder than ever! To-morrow it will be splendid!" Stable-men were shaking out fur robes and arranging cutters. Already the fitful sound of sleigh-bells could be heard; and all the world – the world of Sandyport that is – was preparing to give the in-coming winter a gay welcome.

But in one house in an old-fashioned but still respectable street no one seemed inclined to join in the general merry-making. Only two lights broke its darkness: one shone from the kitchen at the back, where, beside a kerosene lamp, Bethia Kendrick, the old-time servitor of the Talcott family, was gloomily darning stockings, and otherwise making ready for departure on the morrow. The other and fainter glow came from the front room, where without any lamp Georgie Talcott sat alone beside her fire.

It was a little fire, and built of rather queer materials. There were bits of lath and box-covers, fence-pickets split in two, shavings, pasteboard clippings, and on top of all, half of an old chopping-bowl. The light material burned out fast, and had to be continually replenished from the basket which stood on one side the grate.

Georgie, in fact, was burning up the odds and ends of her old life before leaving it behind forever. She was to quit the house on the morrow; and there was something significant to her, and very sorrowful, in this disposal of its shreds and fragments; they meant so little to other people, and so very much to her. The old chopping-bowl, for instance, – her thoughts went back from it to the first time she had ever been permitted to join in the making of the Christmas pies. She saw her mother, still a young woman then, and pretty with the faded elegance which had been her characteristic, weighing the sugar and plums, and slicing the citron, while her own daring little hands plied the chopper in that very bowl. What joy there was in those vigorous dabs and cross-way cuts! how she had liked to do it! And now, the pretty mother, faded and gray, lay under the frozen turf, on which the snow-flakes were thickly falling. There could be no more Christmases for Georgie in the old house; it was sold, and to-morrow would close its doors behind her forever.

She shivered as these thoughts passed through her mind, and rising moved restlessly toward the window. It was storming faster than ever. The sight seemed to make the idea of the morrow harder to bear; a big tear formed in each eye, blurring the white world outside into a dim grayness. Presently one ran down her nose and fell on her hand. She looked at it with dismay, wiped it hastily off, and went back to the fire.

"I won't cry, whatever happens, I'm resolved on that," she said half aloud, as she put the other half of the chopping-bowl on the waning blaze. The deep-soaked richness of long-perished meats was in the old wood still. It flared broadly up the chimney. Georgie again sat down by the fire and resumed her thinking.

"What am I going to do?" she asked herself for the hundredth time. "When my visit to Cousin Vi is over, I must decide on something; but what? A week is such a short time in which to settle such an important thing."

It is hard to be confronted at twenty with the problem of one's own support. Georgie hitherto had been as happy and care-free as other girls. Her mother, as the widow of a naval officer, was entitled to a small pension. This, with a very little more in addition, had paid for Georgie's schooling, and kept the old house going in a sufficiently comfortable though very modest fashion. But Mrs. Talcott was not by nature an exemplary manager. It was hard not to overrun here and there, especially after Georgie grew up, and "took her place in society," as the poor lady phrased it, – the place which was rightfully hers as her father's daughter and the descendant of a long line of Talcotts and Chaunceys and Wainwrights. She coveted pretty things for her girl, as all mothers do, and it was too much for her strength always to deny herself.

So Georgie had "just this" and "just that," and being a fresh attractive creature, and a favorite, made her little go as far as the other girls' much, and now and again the tiny capital was encroached upon. And then, and then, – this is a world of sorry chances, as the weak and helpless find to their cost, – came the bad year, when the Ranscuttle Mills passed their dividend and the stock went down to almost nothing; and then Mrs. Talcott's long illness, and then her death. Sickness and death are luxuries which the poor will do well to go without. Georgie went over the calculations afresh as she sat by the fire, and the result came out just the same, and not a penny better. When she had paid for her mother's funeral, and all the last bills, she would have exactly a hundred and seventy-five dollars a year to live upon, – that and no more!

The furniture, – could she get something for that? She glanced round the room, and shook her head. The articles were neither handsome enough nor quaint enough to command a good price. She looked affectionately at the hair-cloth sofa on which her mother had so often lain, at the well-worn secretary. How could she part with these? How could she sell her great-grandfather's picture, or who, in fact, except herself, would care for the rather ill-painted portrait of a rigid old worthy of the last century, in a wig and ruffled shirt, with a view of Sandyport harbor by way of a background? Her father's silhouette hung beneath it, with his sword and a little mezzotint of his ship. These were treasures to her, but what were they to any one else?

"No," she decided. "Bethia shall take the old kitchen things and her own bedroom furniture, and have the use of them; but the rest must go into Miss Sally's attic for the present. They wouldn't fetch anything; and if they would, I don't think I could bear to sell them. And now that is settled, I must think again, what am I to do? I must do something."

She turned over all manner of schemes in her mind, but all seemed fruitless. Sew? The town was full of sempstresses. Georgie knew of half a dozen who could not get work enough to keep them busy half the time. Teach? She could not; her education in no one respect had been thorough enough. Embroider for the Women's Exchanges and Decorative Art Societies? Perhaps; but it seemed to her that was the very thing to which all destitute people with pretensions to gentility fled as a matter of course, and that the market for tidies and "splashers" and pine-pillows was decidedly overstocked.

"It's no use thinking about it to-night," was the sensible decision to which she at last arrived. "I am too tired. I'll get a sound night's sleep if I can, and put off my worries till I am safely at Miss Sally's."

The sound night's sleep stood Georgie in good stead, for the morrow taxed all her powers of endurance, both physical and moral. Bethia, unhappy at losing the home of years, was tearful and fractious to a degree. Sending off the furniture through the deep snow proved a slow and troublesome matter. The doors necessarily stood open a great deal, the rooms grew very cold, everything was comfortless and dispiriting. And underlying all, put aside but never unfelt, was a deep sense of pain at the knowledge that this was the last day, – the very, very last of the home she had always known, and might know no more.

When the final sledge-load creaked away over the hard frozen crust, Georgie experienced a sense of relief.

"The sooner 'tis over, the sooner to sleep,"

she sang below her breath. Everything was in order. She had generalled all ably; nothing was omitted or forgotten. With steady care she raked out the fire in the kitchen stove, which the new owner of the house had taken off her hands, and saw to the fastenings of the windows. Then she tied on her bonnet and black veil, gave the weeping Bethia a good-by kiss on the door-step, closed and locked the door, and waded wearily through the half-broken paths to the boarding-house of Miss Sally Scannell, where Cousin Vi, otherwise Miss Violet Talcott, had lived for years.

No very enthusiastic reception awaited her. Cousin Vi's invitation had been given from a sense of duty. She "owed it to the child," she told herself, as she cleared out a bureau-drawer, and made a place for Georgie's trunk in the small third-story room which for sixteen years had represented to her all the home she had known. Of course such a visit must be a brief one.

"So you're come!" was her greeting as Georgie appeared. "I thought you'd be here sooner; but I suppose you've had a good deal to do. I should have offered to help if the day had not been so cold. Come in and take your things off."

Georgie glanced about her as she smoothed her hair. The room bore the unmistakable marks of spinsterhood and decayed gentility. It was crammed with little belongings, some valuable, some perfectly valueless. Two or three pieces of spindle-legged and claw-footed mahogany made an odd contrast to the common painted bedroom set. Miniatures by Malbone and lovely pale-lined mezzotints and line engravings hung on the walls amid a maze of photographs and Japanese fans and Christmas cards and chromos; an indescribable confusion of duds encumbered every shelf and table; and in the midst sat Miss Vi's tall, meager, dissatisfied self, with thin hair laboriously trained after the prevailing fashion, and a dress whose antique material seemed oddly unsuited to its modern cut and loopings. Somehow the pitifulness of the scene struck Georgie afresh.

"Shall I ever be like this?" she reflected.

"Now tell me what has happened since the funeral," said her cousin. "I had neuralgia all last week and week before, or I should have got down oftener. Who has called? Have the Hanburys been to see you?"

"Ellen came last week, but I was out," replied Georgie.

"What a pity! And how did it happen that you were out? You ought not to have been seen in the street so soon, I think. It's not customary."

"How could I help it?" responded Georgie, sadly. "I had all the move to arrange for. Mr. Custer wanted the house for Saturday. There was no one to go for me."

"I suppose you couldn't; but it's a pity. It's never well to outrage conventionalities. Have Mrs. St. John and Mrs. Constant Carrington called?"

"Mrs. Carrington hasn't, but she wrote me a little note. And dear Mrs. St. John came twice, and brought flowers, and was ever so kind. She always has been so very nice to me, you know."

"Naturally! The St. Johns were nobodies till Mr. St. John made all that money in railroads. She is glad enough to be on good terms with the old families, of course."

"I don't think it's that," said Georgie, rather wearily. "I think she's nice because she's naturally so kind-hearted, and she likes me."

The tea-bell put an end to the discussion. Miss Sally's welcome was a good deal warmer than Cousin Vi's had been.

"You poor dear child," she exclaimed, "you look quite tired out! Here, take this seat by the fire, Georgie, and I'll pour your tea out first of all. She needs it, don't she?" to Cousin Vi.

"Miss Talcott is rather tired, I dare say," said that lady, icily. Cousin Vi had lived for sixteen years in daily intercourse with Miss Sally, one of the sunniest and most friendly of women, and had never once relaxed into cordiality in all that time. Her code of manners included no approximation toward familiarity between a Talcott and a letter of lodgings.

Georgie took a different view. "Thank you so much, dear Miss Sally," she said. "How good you are! I am tired."

"I wish you wouldn't call Miss Sally 'dear,'" her cousin remarked after they had gone upstairs. "That sort of thing is most disagreeable to me. You have to be on your guard continually in a house like this, or you get mixed up with all sorts of people."

Georgie let it pass. She was too tired to argue.

"Now, let us talk about your plans," Miss Talcott said next morning. "Have you made any yet?"

"N – o; only that I must find some work to do at once."

"Don't speak like that to any one but me," her cousin said sharply. "There are lady-like occupations, of course, in which you can – can – mingle; but they need not be mentioned, or made known to people in general."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. I've never had occasion to look into the matter, but I suppose a girl situated as you are could find something, – embroidery, for instance. You could do that for the Decorative Art. They give you a number, and nobody knows your real name."

"I thought of embroidery," said Georgie; "but I never was very good at it, and so many are doing it nowadays. Besides, it seems to me that people are getting rather tired of all but the finer sort of work."

"What became of that nephew of Mr. Constant Carrington whom you used to see so much of two or three years ago?" demanded Miss Vi, irrelevantly.

"Bob Curtis? I don't quite know where he is. His father failed, don't you remember, and lost all his money, and Bob had to leave Harvard and go into some sort of business?"

"Oh, did he? He's of no consequence, then. I don't know what made me think of him. Well, you could read to an invalid, perhaps, or go to Europe with some lady who wanted a companion."

"Or be second-best wing-maker to an angel," put in Georgie, with a little glint of humor. "Cousin Vi, all that would be very pleasant, but I don't think it is likely to happen. I'm dreadfully afraid no one wants me to go to Europe; and I must have something to do at once, you know. I must earn my bread."

"Don't use such a phrase. It sounds too coarse for anything."

"I don't think so, Cousin Vi. I don't mind working a bit, if only I can hit on something that somebody wants, and that I can do well."

"This is exactly what I have been afraid of," said Miss Vi, despairingly. "I've always had a fear that old Jacob Talcott would break out in you sooner or later. He has skipped two generations, but he was bound to show himself some day or other. He had exactly that common sort of way of looking at things and talking about them, – the only Talcott I ever knew of that did! Don't you recollect how he insisted on putting his son into business, and the boy ran away and went to the West Indies and married some sort of Creole, – all his father's fault?

"Now, I'll tell you," she went on after a pause. "I've been thinking over this matter, and have made up my mind about it. You're not to do anything foolish, Georgie. If you do, you'll be sorry for it all your life, and I shall never forgive you besides. Such a good start as you have made in society, and all; it will be quite too much if you go and spoil your chances with those ridiculous notions of yours. Now, listen. If you'll give up all idea of supporting yourself, unless it is by doing embroidery or something like that, which no one need know about, I'll – I'll – well – I'll agree to pay your board here at Miss Sally's, and give you half this room for a year. As likely as not you'll be married by the end of that time, or if not, something else will have turned up! Any way, I'll do it for one year. When the year is over, we can talk about the next." And Miss Talcott folded her hands with the manner of one who has offered an ultimatum.

If rather a grudging, this was a really generous offer, as Georgie well knew. To add the expense of her young cousin's board to her own would cost Miss Vi no end of self-denials, pinchings here and pinchings there, the daily frets and calculations that weigh so heavily. Miss Talcott's slender income at its best barely sufficed for the narrow lodgings, to fight off the shabbiness which would endanger her place in "society," and to pay for an occasional cab and theatre ticket. Not to do, or at least to seem to be doing and enjoying, what other people did, was real suffering to Cousin Vi. Yet she was deliberately invoking it by her proposal.

Had it been really made for her sake, had it been quite disinterested, Georgie would have been deeply touched and grateful; as it was, she was sufficiently so to thank her cousin warmly, but without committing herself to acceptance. She must think it over, she said.

She did think it over till her mind fairly ached with the pressure of thought, as the body does after too much exercise. She walked past the Woman's Exchange and studied the articles in the windows. There were the same towels and tidies that had been there two months before, or what seemed the same. Georgie recollected similar articles worked by people whom she knew about, for which she had been asked to buy raffle tickets. "She can't get any one to buy it," had been said. Depending on such work for a support seemed a bare outlook. She walked away with a little shake of her head.

"No," she thought; "embroidery wouldn't pay unless I had a 'gift'; and I don't seem to have a gift for anything unless it is housework. I always was good at that; but I suppose I can't exactly take a place as parlor-maid. Cousin Vi would certainly clap me into an asylum if I suggested such a thing. How nice it would be to have a real genius for something! Though now that I think of it, a good many geniuses have died in attics, of starvation, without being able to help themselves."

When she reached home she took a pencil and a piece of paper and wrote as follows: —

Things Wanted.

1. Something I can do.

2. Something that somebody wants me to do.

3. Something that all the other somebodies in search of work are not trying to do.

Round these problems her thoughts revolved, and though nothing came of them as yet, it seemed to clear her mind to have them set down in black and white.

Meantime the two days' tête-à-tête with Cousin Vi produced one distinct result, which was, that let come what come might, Georgie resolved that nothing should induce her to stay on at Miss Sally's as proposed, and be idle. Her healthy and vigorous youth recoiled from the idea.

"It is really good of her to ask me," she thought, "though she only does it for the honor of the family and the dead-and-gone Talcotts. But what a life it would be, and for a whole year too! Cousin Vi has stood it for sixteen, to be sure, poor thing! but how could she? Mother used to say that she was called a bright girl when she first grew up. Surely she might have made something of herself if she had tried, and if Aunt Talcott hadn't considered work one of the seven deadly sins for a lady! She was handsome, too. Even I can recollect her as very good looking. And here she is, all alone, and getting shabbier and poorer all the time. I know she sometimes has not money enough to pay her board, and has to ask Miss Sally to wait, snubbing her and despising her all the time, and holding on desperately to her little figment of gentility. People laugh at her and make fun of her behind her back. They invite her now and then, but they don't really care for her. What is such a society worth? I'll take in washing before I'll come to be like Cousin Vi!"

How little we guess, as we grope in the mists of our own uncertainties, just where the light is going to break through! Georgie Talcott, starting for a walk with her cousin on the third day of her stay at Miss Sally's, saw the St. John carriage pass them and then pull up suddenly at the curb-stone; but she had no idea that so simple a circumstance could affect her fate in any manner. It did, though.

Mrs. St. John was leaning out of the window before they got to the place where the carriage stood, and two prettily gloved hands were stretched eagerly forth.

"Georgie! oh Georgie, how glad I am to see you out, dear! I made Henry stop, because I want you to get in for a little drive and then come home with me to lunch. Mr. St. John is in New York. I am quite alone, and I'll give orders that no one shall be admitted, if you will. Don't you think she might, Miss Talcott? It isn't like going anywhere else, you know, – just coming to me quietly like that."

"I don't see that there would be any impropriety in it," said Miss Talcott, doubtfully; "though – with you, however, it is different. But please don't mention it to any one, Mrs. St. John. It might be misunderstood and lead to invitations which Georgie could not possibly accept. Good-morning."

With a stately bend Cousin Vi sailed down the street. Mrs. St. John, I am sorry to say, made a face after her as she went.

"Absurd old idiot!" she muttered. "Such airs!" Then she drew Georgie in, and as soon as the carriage was in motion pulled her veil aside and gave her a warm kiss.

"I am so glad to get hold of you again!" she said.

Mrs. St. John, rich, childless, warm-hearted, and not over-wise, had adopted Georgie as a special pet on her first appearance in society two years before. It is always pleasant for a girl to be made much of by an older woman; and when that woman has a carriage and a nice house, and can do all sorts of things for the girl's entertainment, it is none the less agreeable. Georgie was really fond of her friend. People who are not over-wise are often loved as much as wiser ones; it is one of the laws of compensation.

"Now tell me all about yourself, and what you have been doing this past week," said Mrs. St. John, as they drove down to the beach, where the surf-rollers had swept the sands clean of snow and left a dry, smooth roadway for the horses' feet. The sea wore its winter color that day, – a deep purple-blue, broken by flashing foam-caps; the wind was blowing freshly; a great sense of refreshment came to Georgie, who had been wearying for a change.

"It has been rather sad and hard," she said. "I have had the house to clear out and close, and all manner of things to do, and I was pretty tired when I finished. But I am getting rested now, and by and by I want to talk over my affairs with you."

"Plans?" asked Mrs. St. John.

"Not exactly. I have no plans as yet; but I must have some soon. Now tell me what you have been doing."

Mrs. St. John was never averse to talking about herself. She always had a mass of experiences and adventures to relate, which though insignificant enough when you came to analyze them, were so deeply interesting to herself that somehow her auditors got interested in them also. Georgie, used to her ways, listened and sympathized without effort, keeping her eyes fixed meanwhile on the shining, shifting horizon of the sea, and the lovely arch of clear morning sky. How wide and free and satisfactory it was; how different from the cramped outlook into which she had perforce been gazing for days back!

"If life could all be like that!" she thought.

The St. John house seemed a model of winter comfort, bright, flower-scented, and deliciously warm, as they entered it after their drive. Mrs. St. John rang for her maid to take off their wraps, and led Georgie through the drawing-room and the library to a smaller room beyond, which was her favorite sitting-place of a morning.

"We will have luncheon here close to the fire," she said, "and be as cosey as possible."

It was a pretty room, not over-large, fitted up by a professional decorator in a good scheme of color, and crowded with ornaments of all sorts, after the modern fashion. It was many weeks since Georgie had seen it, and its profusion and costliness of detail struck her as it never had done before. Perhaps she was in the mood to observe closely.

They were still sipping their hot bouillon in great comfort, when a sudden crash was heard in the distance.

"There!" said Mrs. St. John, resignedly; "that's the second since Monday! What is it now, Pierre?"

She pushed back her chair and went hurriedly into the farther room. Presently she came back laughing, but looking flushed and annoyed.