CHAPTER V.

LONG TALKS.

AS Marion walked home from Sunday school, she resolved to ask Aunt Christian about Rachel "and all the rest of it," as she said, rather contemptuously.

"I might have had the first news to tell the girls if I had had any wit. How stupid they must have thought me not to know a single thing about it! And my watch, too! It was so silly in me to look at it so many times, as if I had never seen one before. I saw Mrs. Bartlett smile, I know. I don't believe Kitty thinks any more of hers than if it were a handkerchief. I suppose her aunt in Paris sent her the diamond-set watch. I would give a great deal to know whether Kitty really is proud of her grand rich relations; though as to that, her connections are not so grand as ours. Just think! The duke himself is a kind of cousin of ours."

And then Marion fell into a kind of reverie or waking dream, in which she represented herself as going abroad, making the acquaintance of dukes and other titled people, marrying some great personage—she did not quite decide whether he should be a prince or some English nobleman—and finally meeting Kitty Tremaine and patronizing her graciously.

Marion passed a great deal of her time in dreams of this kind, in which she always enacted the heroine, performing incredible and often impossible feats of self-sacrifice, courage, and benevolence, running the most frightful risks and going through the most desperate adventures, but always coming out at last in a blaze of honour, riches, and high station.

She enacted every heroine of every story she read, but her favourite character was entirely one of her own creation, namely, "the heiress of the McGregors." This young lady was a damsel of the most varying fortunes. When all went well with Marion in school or at home, the heiress of the McGregors had very nice times. But when things went wrong—when Miss Oliver found fault with her for not having her lessons, for blotting her exercise-book, or inking her fingers, when Aunt Baby insisted on her sweeping her room and mending her stockings, or declined to take her advice about the arrangement of household matters—then the fortunes of the heiress were overcast, then did her wicked uncle strive to make her marry the objectionable cousin who wanted her property, then did he shut her up in the gloomy chamber with barred windows and set the wicked old woman to spy upon her motions and insult her in all possible ways. The heiress of the McGregors it was who had occasioned Marion's being kept after school, and in general it must be said that this much persecuted young lady was responsible for most of her forgetfulness of present duty.

But Marion had taken a book from the library that day which was destined to open a new life to the heiress of the McGregors. She opened it at first without any great expectation of interest or amusement, but soon became so absorbed in its pages as to take no heed of anything else. She read through it the first time at express speed, and then, turning back, she read it more leisurely—a very good plan, be it observed, when a book is worth reading at all. She was so absorbed in the volume that she forgot her intention of learning all about Rachel and the school from her aunt; and though Doctor and Mrs. Campbell were talking about the mission all the evening, she never heard nor heeded till her grandfather said:

"What do you think of that, Marion? That would be worse than the soap-making that you complain of."

"Think of what? Oh, it would be very nice," said Marion, looking up absently. "I should like it very much;" and then, pettishly, as every one laughed, "I don't know what you are talking about."

"So it seems," said Aunt Christian. "I think you would hardly say you liked the work your uncle has been describing."

"Marion was reading her Sunday school book," said Aunt Baby, always ready to excuse and shield her darling. "What is it about, Marie?"

"I don't think you would be interested in it, Aunt Baby," said Marion, rather superciliously; "but you can read it if you like."

"Let me see," said Uncle Alick, stretching out his hand for the book, which Marion rather unwillingly parted with.

"Who buys your books?" asked Doctor Campbell.

"Mrs. Tremaine and Miss Oliver, usually," answered Alick. "We had a large quantity given us this spring, however, by a lady who spent last summer here, and I see this is one of them. It was very kind in her, but I must confess I have my doubts about some of the books. I think I will ask Mrs. Tremaine to look them over."

"Yes, and then she will be sure to take out all the interesting books, just as she did 'Madeline Trevor' last summer," said Marion.

"'Madeline Trevor'!" repeated Mrs. Campbell, in amazement. "You don't mean to say that you had that in the Sunday school library?"

"Even so," answered Alick; "it was given us, as this was, by one of the summer visitors who have invaded us of late years, and went through several hands before Mrs. Tremaine stopped it."

"And I never could see why she needed to stop it at all," said Marion; "it was so interesting, and had a great deal of religion in it."

"And a good deal else, unluckily. However, I cannot say I have found any harm in these books, though a great many of them are rather feeble."

"This isn't feeble, at any rate," said Marion, thinking, at the same time, "How absurd of uncle to think himself capable of judging of books!"

"Aunt Christian, why haven't you ever written a Sunday school book?" asked Marion, presently. "I think you might make such an interesting story about the schools out there."

"Because there are only twenty-four hours in the day, my dear; and when each of these hours is already filled as full as it will hold, there is no room for more, even as when a pint cup already holds a pint of milk you can by no means put a pint of molasses therein."

"I have often wished that somebody would do that same thing, however," remarked Doctor Campbell. "I think, if such a book were successful, it might do a great deal toward rousing an interest in the mission work."

"Yes; Marion's hint is a good one, and I will certainly take it into consideration," said Mrs. Campbell. "You see, Marion, the only person who could write such a book is one of the teachers who have been engaged in the work of the school and lived among the people; but I will certainly think the matter over."

The next day Mrs. Campbell was engaged in unpacking and disposing of her possessions and distributing the presents she had brought home. Marion was delighted with a string of large and finely-cut amber beads and a bottle of genuine otto of rose, nor was the heiress of the McGregors above being gratified with a box of Rabat-Lookoom. For the benefit of such unfortunate people as have no friends in Turkey, I will explain that Rabat-Lookoom is a delectable kind of marmalade or paste, made, I believe, of the juice of figs and other fruits. It is known to city confectioners as Turkish fig-paste.

"Are you going to school to-day?" asked Mrs. Campbell.

"Yes, I suppose so," answered Marion, in a somewhat discontented tone. "If one stays out, one is behind all the others just so far. Then, when it comes to review day, there is just so much more to do, for Miss Oliver never will let us miss a lesson."

"Miss Oliver is a very thorough teacher," remarked Aunt Baby. "There, Marion! Your dinner-basket is all ready, and I wish at noon-time you would go round to Barton's and ask him to send up a barrel of flour, six pounds of white sugar, and a box each of cloves, pepper, and cinnamon. Can you remember all that?"

"Yes, I suppose so," answered Marion. "Good-bye, Aunt Christian."

"If I finish my unpacking in time, I will walk down to meet you," said Mrs. Campbell. "I have a string of olive-wood beads for Grandfather Beaubien which I must carry myself. I suppose the old man is living still?"

"Yes, but very old and feeble," answered Miss Barbara. "Tone's disgrace nearly killed him."

"Has he become a Protestant?"

"Not avowedly, but he comes to church sometimes in fine weather and reads the French Bible which Mrs. Tremaine gave him. I think the old man is a very good Christian according to his lights. He has brought up his children well. Poor Tone is the only black sheep in the flock, and old Michael has been wonderfully kind and patient with his daughter-in-law, poor perverse woman that she is."

Marion had reached the school-room door before she again remembered that she had forgotten to ask anything about Rachel.

"There! now the girls will all be at me again," she said to herself. "One good thing is that I have errands enough to do to keep me busy all through noon-time; and besides, I can tell them that Aunt Christian would rather tell the story herself."

It did occur to Marion that this was not quite an honest account of the affair, but Marion was becoming rather careless in the matter of exact truthfulness. This is very apt to be the case with people who are constantly obliged to make excuses for themselves, and Marion's conduct had needed a great many excuses of late.

The girls received her account of the matter very readily, however, the more that a new subject of interest had arisen which in some degree eclipsed the little Syrian maiden whom the girls of Holford Sunday school had been keeping at the boarding-school in Beiruyt for the last two years.

"Just think, Marion! Tone Beaubien has been seen again. Cousin Sam was up on Blue Hill looking for a stray colt, and met a man who he knows was Tone, though he had a great beard on. Sam says he recognized him in a minute. He used to know Tone very well when they were boys."

"Did he speak to him?"

"No. He was going to, but Tone—if it was Tone—dodged aside among the bushes, and Sam did not see him again. I dare say he didn't look very closely."

"And no shame to him if he didn't," said Kitty Tremaine. "I hope Sam was mistaken, for poor Therese's sake. It will be a terrible thing for her if her father turns up again."

"I should think your mother would be afraid to have her in the house," said Laura Bryant, who had told the story. "Mother says she shall never have Mrs. Beaubien to wash again."

"I think that is hardly fair," said Kitty. "Mrs. Beaubien is not to blame if her husband has come back; and, after all, it may be a mistake. One man with a beard looks very much like another. I know when we lived in Paris I used to think all Frenchmen looked exactly alike."

"How fond Kitty is of bringing in 'when we were in Paris'!" whispered Laura to Marion, who nodded without paying much attention to what was said.

"But really, Kitty," continued Laura, "do you believe your folks will keep Therese if her father is about? I should think your mother would be awful scared."

"Mother is not easily scared," answered Kitty, quietly. "We are all very fond of Therese, and we shall need her more than ever, because Cousin Tilly is going to the Cure for a while on account of her sprained ankle."

"Do you and Therese really talk French together, and all that?" questioned Laura, who had considerably more curiosity about her neighbours' affairs than about her lessons, and who was especially interested in all the doings of the Tremaine household.

"I don't know what 'all that' means," answered Kitty, smiling; "we certainly do both speak and read French together. Mother says it is good practice for me, and that as French is Therese's native tongue, so to speak, it is a pity that she should lose it. It may be very useful to her some time, and to us too."

"Well, I wouldn't do it," said Laura. "If I had a servant, she should keep her place."

"Therese never gets out of hers," said Kitty. "She is the best mannered girl I almost ever saw. But I am very sorry to hear this rumour about her father on more accounts than one. Here comes Miss Oliver. Laura, if you don't want to be reminded of your place, I advise you to get down off the top of the desk."

At recess Miss Oliver called Marion to her side:

"What about your arithmetic lesson, Marion? Have you written it out, as I told you?"

Marion displayed her book.

"That is right, and very neatly done," said Miss Oliver. "Marion, my dear, why won't you always give me the pleasure of praising you?"

Marion looked down and played with her watch-chain.

"There is not a girl in the school with better abilities than yourself," continued Miss Oliver, "nor one who can, if she chooses, make herself more agreeable, and yet there is hardly one of your age who does not stand better than yourself. Why is it?"

Marion murmured that she didn't know how it was.

"I think I know," said Miss Oliver: "it is because you do not take pains. Your mind is not on your work. I often see you sitting with a book before you and looking out of the window for half an hour together. I do not pretend to know what you are thinking of at such times, but certainly your thoughts are not where they ought to be—on your present duties.

"You are losing two very precious things, my child, time and opportunity—two things which, once lost, can be found no more in this world, no more, perhaps, in the whole universe. You are abusing the kindness of your grandfather, who keeps you at school, you are a constant worry and annoyance to me, you set a bad example to the others, you help to lower the character of the school, and you are ruining your own. Now, what am I to do with you?"

Miss Oliver paused a moment, and then went on more gravely still:

"I can tell you what I shall do, Marion: there are two months more remaining of this term. I shall give you those two months in which to turn over a new leaf. If I do not see a very marked improvement at the end of that time, I shall lay the matter before the trustees and ask them to remove you from the school. It will grieve me to the heart to take this course on your own account, and still more on that of your friends, but I shall certainly do it."

Never in all her life had Marion been so utterly mortified and humiliated. She was crushed not only by the weight of the blow, but by its entire unexpectedness. She had somehow gone on flattering herself that she was a favourite with Miss Oliver and a person of great consequence in the school, and the thought that she could be expelled never entered her mind. But she knew that Miss Oliver was a woman of her word, and that her representation was all powerful with the trustees of the little endowed school. Oh, if she should be expelled, what a dreadful disgrace it would be!

Marion would have liked to escape to her usual refuge of considering herself persecuted, but it would not do. Conscience was aroused, and forced her to look the matter steadily in the face. She dared not accuse Miss Oliver of injustice; she knew it was all true. For the last year and more she had been steadily falling behindhand in her lessons; she had evaded her duties all she possibly could; and even when she had learned a lesson, it made no permanent impression, but had passed through her mind like water through a sieve, because she bestowed no after-thought upon it. If there was a puzzle in the arithmetic or algebra lesson or a hard line in Virgil, Kitty Tremaine, Lizzie Gates, and Julia Parmalee, and some others, would very likely get together after school and find a real pleasure in disentangling the hard knot.

But not so Marion. "I could not do it," or "I did not understand it, Miss Oliver," satisfied her. In her character of "the heiress of the McGregors" Marion was endowed with every accomplishment, from playing the harp down to embroidering tapestry, while the real Marion seemed likely to be left without even the decent beginnings of an education.

"Well, I can't help it," said Marion, pettishly, to herself, at last; "Miss Oliver might make the lessons more interesting." And then came the reflection, "The lessons are interesting to the others; why not to you? Lizzy Gates is quite as bright; Kitty Tremaine has seen ten times more of the world. Her mother is a very accomplished woman, and able to take Kitty to New York, or even to Paris, for her education, and yet she keeps her with Miss Oliver." Marion was obliged to abandon that line of defence, and she could not at once find any other to which she might betake herself.

"Well, I will turn over a new leaf—I really will," said Marion. "It would be perfectly dreadful to be turned out of school. If I could only go somewhere else, I know I should do better. I have been to Miss Oliver so long. But I don't see how that is ever to come about. Grandfather says he can't afford to let me have French lessons this term, and I don't believe Miss Oliver would allow it, either. She would be sure to bring up all my bad Latin lessons and those horrible irregular verbs and prepositions governing the accusative. Oh dear! How unhappy I am! And there are all Aunt Baby's errands that I must do this noon instead of reading my book. However, that is just as well, for I should not dare to let Miss Oliver see me reading a story-book. Oh what a plague it is! I never can have half a chance."

Marion was so far impressed with Miss Oliver's words that she did every one of her errands and got through her afternoon's lessons without a single failure. She was walking homeward, reading as she went, when she came upon Mrs. Campbell.

"Why, Aunt Christian, is this you? How did you come here?" asked Marion.

"Really, Marie, I am half affronted," answered Mrs. Campbell, smiling; "didn't I tell you I was coming down to meet you as you came home?"

"Yes, to be sure; it was very nice in you," said Marion, trying to appear glad, when in truth she would rather have been alone. Marion thought it was one out of many signs of her superiority that she "loved solitude." "Have you been anywhere in the village?"

"Yes; I called on Michael Beaubien and saw several of my old acquaintances in the French settlement. I see a great change there, Marion."

"Yes, every one says so."

"But the old man did not seem so cheerful as he used to be," continued Mrs. Campbell. "I fancy he has something on his mind."

"Very likely," answered Marion. "I dare say Sam Bryant has told him the story of his seeing Tone up on Blue Hill, Saturday. I hope it is not true, but Laura says Sam is quite sure. I shall be afraid to stir away from home if he is round, shall not you? He is such a desperate character."

"Really, Marie, I have lived so much among desperate characters of late years that I think I have become rather hardened to them. If you imagine Tone Beaubien multiplied by five hundred, you will have some faint notion of our neighbours at our last country station. But I hope with you that Sam may be mistaken, for it would be a great misfortune to the whole family if Tone should come back. That is one trouble of one member of a family taking to evil courses. The disgrace of one is reflected on all the rest."

Marion felt as if her aunt had given her a slap without meaning it. She hastily changed the subject:

"Have you ever read this book, aunt? I think it is perfectly splendid."

Mrs. Campbell took the book and looked at it:

"Yes, we had it on the ship, and I read it while on board."

"And didn't you like it very much? Don't you think Maria is well drawn?" Then, without waiting for an answer, "I think it was grand for her to take her career into her own hands and insist on doing something worth while, instead of wasting her time and talents in that humdrum old place with stupid people. If I could only see something like that opening before me, I should have some courage to live," said Marion, pathetically "as it is, I haven't one bit."

Mrs. Campbell had not been teaching since she was sixteen without becoming acquainted with the genus girl in almost all its varieties. "Oh, you sentimental little gosling!" was her inward thought, but she showed no signs even of amusement.

"But, Marion, if I recollect rightly, these humdrum people had taken Maria when she was an orphan child, and had stinted themselves to give her support and education. Don't you think she owed them some duty? Was it a very exalted course of action to go away from them the moment she was able, leaving her benefactors, in their old age and loneliness, unaided and uncomforted? Was it right to treat them in that way?"

"One's first duty is one's own development and improvement," said Marion, grandiloquently, yet with a certain uneasy consciousness that the words and Miss Oliver's late lecture did not go well together.

"Do you think so? I don't. I read that no man liveth or dieth to himself, and that whosoever will come after the divine Pattern of all must deny himself and take up his cross daily. I think, moreover, that the best way of improving ourselves is simply to do our duty as it is presented to us."

"I don't believe much in duty, anyhow," said Marion, shifting her ground. "I think the ruling principle should be love, and not duty."

"Love of what?" asked Mrs. Campbell.

Marion was not prepared with an answer.

"I don't like this opposing of love and duty which I find is so much the fashion," continued Mrs. Campbell. "They are no more opposed than a man's flesh and bones are opposed, if you will forgive a doctor's wife for using such an anatomical figure. The skeleton alone would never make a man, but the man would be worth little without it. He would be like the Boneless in grandfather's story—a poor crawling creature, quite unable to stand upright, and having, moreover, if I remember rightly, a very uncomfortable habit of strangling people. As to your heroine, Marie, I must say, at the risk of lowering myself in your opinion, that I do not at all admire her."

"But she accomplished so much, Aunt Christian. Just think how she helped those people who were afflicted with the insanity of their daughter, and trained the children when their mother had spoiled them and all the rest. Was not that better than spending her life in making shirts and butter and reading the newspaper to her uncle?"

"No, Marie, I don't think it was, not if the shirts and the butter, and so on, were the work which Providence had given her."

"Well, I can't agree with you," said Marion; "and I don't think you are very consistent with yourself, Aunt Christian. Why didn't you stay at home?"

"Because, my dear, I had my living to earn. Times were hard in those days. The farm produced little, and there was no market for that little. Mother was very delicate, and the hive would not hold honey for us all. I would gladly have stayed at home; but as I said, I had my living to earn. I always expected to come home when Aunt Baby married, but after her great disappointment there was an end of that, and then Eiley came home to be cared for."

"Why, Aunt Christian, you don't mean to say that Aunt Baby ever had a love-affair?" exclaimed Marion. "I should as soon expect to hear such a story of old Ball."

Marion looked up as she spoke, and encountered a glance from Christian's fine gray eyes which made her feel at once that she had spoken improperly.

"I don't like to hear you speak in that way of my sister, Marion," said Christian, very gravely. "Setting aside your own personal debt of gratitude for her care and kindness ever since you were a baby, there is not a woman in the world more worthy of respect than Barbara McGregor. Yes, Barbara had a love-affair which came to a sorrowful termination. She was troth-plight to a very fine young man named Fergus Kerr, who was mate of an East Indiaman. He engaged for one more voyage before he should be married, with the promise of being promoted to the command of a fine new vessel on his return. The vessel sailed with every prospect of a favourable voyage, and was never heard of again.

"You have a lively imagination, Marion. I leave you to represent to yourself all the agony of suspense and despair before Barbara settled down into her present state of cheerful content and daily self-sacrifice—a self-sacrifice which has grown so complete that she has ceased to be aware of it herself. I have known many good women, but I never knew one better than Barbara."

Mrs. Campbell spoke with an earnestness which brought tears into her eyes. The two walked on in silence a little way, and then Marion broke out again:

"After all, Aunt Christian, all this does not reconcile me to my present way of life, this round of petty details which takes up all my time and is so belittling and cramping. I am sure I am willing to help, and I do. I do half the errands for the family, and more too. I help about the butter and feed the hens and churn. I am willing to sacrifice myself to any extent, but—"

"What do these errands consist in?" asked Aunt Christian.

"Oh, in many little things—in buying sugar and tea, and all such things as we buy at the store, in getting grandfather snuff and going to the post-office, and so on. I am willing to do them, too, but I do feel it a great sacrifice to occupy my mind and time with such trifles."

"But, Marion, don't you eat and drink your share of the sugar and tea and spices and flour? And do not the dairy and the hens help to buy your new frocks and hats, and so on?"

"Yes, I suppose so, of course."

"Well, then, excuse me, my dear, but really is there any such great self-sacrifice in buying your own dinner or your own hats and gloves? Are you not working for yourself all the time?"

Marion was silent. She had not thought of matters in that light.

"As for these details of which you complain," continued Mrs. Campbell, "they belong to every kind of work as much as to housework, and are often of a much more disagreeable character. I assure you I have found it so. You don't like sweeping. How would you like to superintend a school of twenty girls not one of whom had ever known the use of a nail-brush or a fine comb, to say naught of other troubles? How would you like to associate all day with such people?"

"Anyhow, I should feel that I was bringing something to pass."

"You are bringing, in the end, just the same thing to pass in one case as in the other, and that is your duty," said Mrs. Campbell, "the thing which your heavenly Father gives you to do, and which you please and honour him in doing. That is the secret, my lassie—to learn to do everything to and for him; and believe me, my child, he is by far the easiest master we can have. It not seldom happens that we do our best in this world, and, after all, we are misunderstood, and to the eyes of men we may seem to fail utterly, but our heavenly Father never misunderstands us, and no work which is done for him ever fails. Here we are at last. How slowly we have walked!"

Marion was not sorry. She had lately become very impatient of any religious conversation, especially when it appealed to herself.

"Aunt Christian doesn't understand me any better than the rest," she said to herself, when she went up to her room. "Nobody ever does. If my father had lived, he would have felt for me. I suppose I am like him, and that sets them all against me. Oh dear! I wish I could only have a chance I would show them what was in me."

Nevertheless, the events of the day made so much impression that Marion learned all her lessons for next morning before "the heiress of the McGregors" was allowed to enter upon a career of active usefulness among her tenantry, for which she was bitterly persecuted by her wicked uncle.